Let there be light

The lightbulb in my bedside lamp just burned out. For the first time. In SEVEN AND A HALF YEARS. I have a spare, somewhere... which I have moved with me, SIX TIMES, waiting for this day.

I have no idea where it is.

Updates

Well hello there... why yes, it's been a while. Life has not been boring, I've just been sorting through things that I seem to be very guarded about, and have found that somehow, even the blog has not been a place that's felt entirely safe.

Truth is, I'm doing well. Very well. But the older I get, the more I realize that "doing well" is not always equated with feeling good, or understanding everything. I'm wrestling a lot. Crying some. Trying to equate it with the idea of giving birth... that it is painful and joyful all mixed together and that hopefully the end result is something hard-earned and very worthwhile.

A few posts ago, I mentioned a new crush, and was feeling quite upbeat about the prospect of letting go of the past. Turns out, it's not always as easy as I would like it to be. The crush became a date which became a world traveling companion which became a boyfriend. All very well and good. He is, by all accounts, incredibly genuine, and kind, and generous. And he's actually doing pretty well in the area of emotional intelligence. As in, able to talk about his own, and able to roll with some of my more overwhelming ones without needing to try to make them go away.

But the problem seems to be that the process I was so glib about in my last post -- making space for someone new and letting go of someone old -- just doesn't feel as good as it sounded when I wrote about it in the rose-colored light of a new crush. The problem is that along with this round of wonderful seems to have come another bout of grief, like a shadow. Is that normal? I mean, I kinda think it is, it makes so much sense that part of the reality of saying goodbye to someone can't start to be real until you find someone worth giving a chance in the space they left behind, and you can never be "ready" for that before it happens. But part of me feels like I'm cheating on the new boy even by being sad about the old one still. Although I recognize that a lot of this is exacerbated by having had to see the old one every week during the fall beach league... I think a little less social overlap is in order.

In any case, like I said, doing very well. Trying very hard to just relax, keep being honest, and enjoy the potential.

brief, unsatisfying update

I am not dead, I am in fact, very busy, but also doing very very well.

As in, proving-to-myself-that-life-does-in-fact-go-on well.

More soon.

Fire rant

It's time again. Out of the east, the Santa Ana winds tear through the valley, like clockwork every October, a hot desert wind. It's just the way things go here. And yeah, I complain about it, because my allergies kick up, and besides, it's October, for cryin' out loud, and I just bought a new sweater, and I'm tired of it being 85 degrees because I want to wear it, whine whine, but I know what's in store and I choose to live here.

And it's fire season. The winds leave a wake of smoke and destruction. The San Fernando Valley is burning tonight, about 10 miles up the road from my office, and thousands of people are being evacuated, and it's all over the news. So I'm reading the story tonight, in the LA Times, and I notice a few of the "comments" people leave after the story, and I can't believe the response. "These winds are so predictable," they say, "why doesn't the city do something to stop this from happening every year when they know the winds are coming?" Over and over in the comments, people keep complaining that every year, we have fire.

Do I really have to spell this out? What, exactly, do these people hope that the city does to stop a force of nature from time immortal? Fire is fire, people, it's a fact of life. If you're gonna build a house in the mountains, in the path of hot desert winds, and in the vicinity of oh, maybe one or two adolescents and/or sociopaths who think it's funny to set a fire when the winds come just to see what happens, just what exactly do you expect the city to do about that, other than knock on your door at 3am and kindly tell you to get the hell out before you go up with the place?

I think this kind of stuff ticks me off so much because it's just part of the general American M.O. to think that we are capable of being completely, utterly safe from harm. I'm not sure where, in our survey of human history, we came up with this idea, but as a country we seem to have done a decent job of propagating the idea that we can buy our way out of the consequences of everything from germs to terrorism to acts of god.

And even within that genre of complete hubris, I think the "fire" uproar pushes an extra-special button of mine. Fire is such a necessary part of the ecological world. The landscape gets decimated, the landscape recovers. Whether we do controlled burns, or leave it alone, it will all burn, someday. Even the canyon where my house is. Someday. And while I feel deeply for the losses of the people who are affected by it, I'm still irritated by the assumption that we might have superceded the laws of nature just because we needed to sprawl.

Three months

Zoinks, last week was one of those weeks. I went from 2 clients to 13 pretty much overnight, and added 8 students for my other job, and discovered that trying to keep track of 21 people other than yourself is do-able, but only if you don't stop to think about your personal life during the day. Or, really, any point during the week.

It's been over three months now; I don't know where I expected to be three months down the road, I just know that was the timeframe I gave myself initially to get over the worst part of a broken heart. Right after breaking up, I told myself I would wait at least three months before I made any major decisions, like to move to Kansas or quit my job or get another tattoo. I'm three months in and none of those things sounds remotely appealing, so I guess I'm glad I didn't make any rash decisions. I'm still settled, I still like my life, I'm still mostly content where I'm at. Even more so, in some ways, because losing the cross-town commute and double-life-mode has deepened my roots in the life I'm in. But doing "mostly well" possibly makes it harder when one of those days sneak in, when I still feel like my heart has been partially carved out with a dull grapefruit spoon. They're not frequent, but another one recently hit. And when they do, I feel like everyone must surely be tired of hearing about it by now, so I mostly keep it to myself, until I can't anymore, and I find a safe place/person and lose my shit for a half hour or so, then I pick myself up and move on for another month. All in all, I'm not too worried.

Dating has been interesting to throw in the mix.... mostly I've been meeting people that I didn't end up being interested in (was that Transformers tee-shirt supposed to impress me? It made an impression all right...), but then out of nowhere I realized I had... gasp... a crush on someone. It's been almost three years since that happened. I knew I was crushing, I suppose, when I realized I'd passed up a chance to go to an REI garage sale just to see him at a party... and if you know how much I love REI, and how much I love a good bargain, then you know I must have meant business. And I flirted, the perfect combination of shamelessly and tastefully, and it appears to have actually gotten me somewhere, and good god when did I learn how to do that? But it seems that while going on dates was easy (which, up until now, mostly involved having a drink with men I say goodbye to and never really think about again), liking someone involves a different kind of letting go. Because to even think about making real space for somebody new you have to start to let go of the missing, and the regrets, and the what-ifs, and all the other things you've been hanging onto to try to keep a piece - however scant and hollow - of the person who's gone.

In fact, I am coming to think that "letting go" is not so much being able to shake our hands clean of the thing that we're moving on from, but rather just loosening our grip - with every new conversation, every "yes" to an invitation, every "what the hell, why not drive to the next county on a Friday night to talk to someone who intrigues me?" - so that we put ourselves more directly in the path of something new coming along out of the blue, and bumping us, and perhaps a bit more of what we'd been holding onto goes flying out the window.

Talk Nerdy to Me

I appear to be a complete geek magnet.

I hate to even use that phrase, and put it that way, because tonight I went out with a sweet, gentlemanly, friendly guy for a blind date, who I had interesting conversation with for two hours, who did absolutely everything "right" (whatever that means for a blind date), and I in no way want to slam on him as a person... but yeah. Not geeky in a hot-geeky sort of way. Just geeky. He played the pipe organ. At one point in time he was talking about adopting cats, but he was concerned about being the "single guy with cats," and was wondering how many cats would it take to put him in that category? He thought four was definitely too many, but wasn't sure about three, and what did I think? What I was really thinking is that he had just officially confirmed what I knew, in the very pit of my stomach, the minute he walked in the door... I was going to have a very pleasant evening but, in no uncertain terms, I was not going to be interested.

The last two guys I went out with have been computer scientists (the first one - of "not-a-date-date" fame, who finally asked me on a real date last weekend - was much more socially inclined than this last one, though, and if he were to actually flirt with me somewhere in the middle of one of our great conversations I would probably not be upset), and I'm going out with another guy next week who will probably put the first two to shame (in a "Booger" from Revenge of the Nerds sort of way, from what I gather). Apparently I am sort of in the "what the hell? why not?" phase of returning to dating. Maybe I'm secretly dating geeks because it's so easy for me to talk to them, and therefore, honestly, a bit of a confidence booster before I actually put myself out there for real?

Don't get me wrong, I like smart people. But there are different kinds of smart. And while I get a kick out of a good conversation about, say, the future of artificial intelligence, at the end of the day I just want to fall asleep in the arms of somebody who gets me in a totally different way.

So perhaps if I took that line about "being good at math" out of my online profile, I'd change my odds?

Fish. As in, others in the sea.

I went on a date on Saturday. Or, well, it wasn't a date-date, but it ended up feeling like a date... the kind of thing that's definitely not a date, unless it becomes retroactive because you wind up together, old and gray, sitting around in your rocking chairs arguing over whether that was your first date, and really, how often does that happen? Thus, a "not-a-date"-date. I had a great time, he was really a nice guy, a friend of a friend. Then, of course, I came home and lamented the fact that I had a date-like-thing, because it reminds me that I'm dating, and I hate dating. But I'm trying to get over that, so I went on a second-date-like thing tonight (or a "second-hanging-out" or "second-not-a-date-date" or whatever the kids are calling it these days), and also had a very enjoyable evening, but then walked away confused, and realizing that I think we had both been possibly interested, but then waited on the other person to act more interested, and then both walked away not knowing whether either of us was really interested.

I just went to break-up therapy with my ex-boyfriend. Trippy. Challenging, to say the least, but cathartic. I mean really, who goes to therapy after they break up, just to do the breaking up better, unless they're working out a major co-parenting arrangement (well, or unless they're a therapist with a twisted curiosity to watch a professional handle an emotional un-coupling, even if it's her own)? Me, that's who. Who needed some support and safety and containment (as in, one hour, not-a-minute-longer, then say goodbye for now with someone there to tie up our loose ends and keep us accountable to not getting all mushy and misty-eyed and missing each other on the way out the door). I'm not suggesting that we're BFF now; we amicably agreed to steer clear of each other for a little while longer. And I won't pretend that I'm done being angry, but it feels better to have said some stuff and not just be beating my own head against the wall alone at the end of the day. Honestly, if we were never going to see each other again in social circles, then maybe just running for the hills would have been an easier path to take. Or if I were one of those people who could compartmentalize broken, cut-off relationships with no resolution. But for better or worse, I'm just not one of those people.

Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Take the next 45 minutes of your life and go directly here to watch Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.

I made it!

I made it through my birthday! Maybe I was just so prepared to cry that I held out through it, kind of like when you see a wave coming and take the time to plant your feet, but if you get blindsided, you're more likely to find yourself pushed under, slammed around, and having to spend a week getting the sand out of your nose.

I was extra-specially glad to see the work-week end this week... for a few reasons. First, I am vacating myself from LA and road-tripping up to Berkeley with Natalie this weekend, so the promise of vacation and old friends sort of heightens the drag factor of the working world. Second, it's just been an emotionally draining week on multiple, unrelated personal fronts, and was topped off by emotionally draining clients today, who cried and yelled and argued and made excuses and had to lay on the floor because they were so anxious and generally required me to do my job, of being a therapist who helps people sort through, contain, and express unpleasant emotions, when really I had just finally settled into my summer routine of staring at a computer doing paperwork and reserving all my emotional energy for myself.

So, needless to say, a little road trip up the 5 sounds delightful!

It's my party, I can cry if I want to

*** warning: another post that seems to have degenerated into musing about adulthood and other non-perky subjects and may only be relevant to women in their 30s ***

Every year I cry on my birthday, and this year probably won't be an exception.

I've been feeling a little wallow-ey, so I just came home from work and devoured another chunk of Alli's "better than sex" cake (which is a very ambitious name for a cake that won't even hold me afterwards while I fall asleep). And I decided at the last minute to take tomorrow off of work, so I'm dreaming of the possibilities. I had a little bbq on Sunday and as the evening ended, I felt astoundingly... grateful for so much about my LA life. I wish I could hold onto that feeling all of the time, but hey, I'm human.

I had coffee last night with an old friend from Berkeley, and we were musing on the general joys and tribulations of growing up, and he reminded me of a quote from his sponsor: "it's all about learning to wear the big boy pants." They don't always fit and they feel more formal than I'd like to be and sometimes they chafe... but I guess you just keep walking. You learn the world is rarely fair, and that it's definitely not going to take a smoke break for your emotions. You learn that maybe, just maybe, feeling happy all the time is not a constitutional right. You realize that sometimes (though not all the time) the best thing you can do is just let yourself be lonely and not try so hard to fight it when you don't have the energy to spare. You start to suspect that your magic wand may be permanently on backorder. But there's room in the pants to grow into, and you also learn what's worth spending your energy on, or as a friend recently put it, that you're "too old for insecurities, flightiness, and uninteresting things." You start to believe that life's really too short to worry about your upper-arm fat. And you get better, a bit, at knowing what you want and saying no to the stuff (or people) that you don't.

Lately I am learning that I am capable of being very, very pissed off (yes, I wasn't really sure about that one... I'm usually very easygoing). I am also realizing, and it is not very fun, that I may have Issues with expressing anger, or at least expressing it towards the thing that's actually making me angry, and then I get angry with myself for acting like I'm not angry, and then before I know it I find myself getting off the phone with the thing that's making me angry and then, oh, say, calling up someone 1000 miles away to scream about how angry I am. Yes, I know this helps no one. And I'm confirming that because I don't really "do" anger well, it comes out as "sad," because that's really the only emotion I'm good at expressing, well, pretty much anywhere. So tomorrow could just be the day where everything going on in there, all the gratitude and anger and getting to talk to so many people I love all over the country, and everything else, just winds up coming out through my eyeballs.

I'll keep you posted.

...be vewwy qwiet, the wabbit is sweeeeping...

I'm keeping quiet for a reason these days... though I can't exactly describe it. I think I'm imploding maybe, just a bit. Or, as my lucky LA friends can attest, it's a bit more explosive, as they watch me light off like a rocket, blow off steam, then glide gently back to earth to wait another hour or so for the return trip. The word "irritable" would sum it up nicely. I'm exhausted this week (I put in 20 hours over my usual schedule, at some other jobs) and feeling like I've hit the "angry" stage and have definitely not been getting enough sleep (partially work-related, partially because I stayed up one night watching an entire disc of Six Feet Under and working on a kick-ass sewing project until 3am), and I have just generally been on overload. I have a few chances to help it work its way out a bit this upcoming week though, so for now I feel like I've taken one step back again (into all the icky feelings) but I sense the promise, if I stay here for a little while and do something productive with them, of getting to go Mother-May-I-Take two big steps forward as fall rolls in. Keeping my fingers crossed, at least.

Mental Status Report

When we do intakes at my agency, we have to do a full-page "mental status" report for our clients (including taking a guess at their vocabulary and intelligence, often based on the 8 words they've spoken in the past two hours). But oh, how I wish we had a category for parental mental status.

At an intake last week, the parent reported that she used to let her daughter do gymnastics, but then she pulled her out and made her stop because gymnasts are really short, and she didn't want her daughter to be short when she grew up. So, no more gymnastics.

"Ct's Mo exhibits marked cognitive difficulty re: logic and reality testing..."

It's my party...

Yeah, there's nothing really going badly this week... pretty much cruising along, mostly just bored and tired. But methinks it's time for a good cry, and I'm just curious now what will actually bring it on.

If it doesn't happen soon, I may need to induce. Taking recommendations for a good tearjerker (bear in mind that I have been known to cry during commercials when the time is right).

Relationship People

It's funny how you can forget about things you once said.

I was having coffee with a friend the other day, and she reminded me that waaaaay back when Goat and I were starting to date, I was freaking out and kept worrying that maybe I just wasn't a "relationship person." I'd had nearly 30 years of being mostly single, moving around, starting over, traveling the world, doing whatever I felt like whenever I felt like it, and I was really worried that being in a relationship would feel boring, tied down, stuck... although at the same time, on some level I may have been just a teensy bit worried that maybe I was actually incapable of being content. I suppose I could say that about a lot of my 20s, and for 90% of my friends. We were having adventures, exploring, making great friends, but always looking for what was coming next. I had a string of jobs I didn't enjoy, never felt like I had roots, I was always either moving or people were moving away from me. And even though it was exhausting, we weren't ready to stop, because we weren't really happy, or settled, where we were at.

What a difference a few years makes. Somewhere along the way last year, I woke up and realized I was really... content. It was a surprisingly delicious feeling. Not that I never wanted anything to change ever again, but I felt like I was finally on some paths, in work and in life, where I wanted to just keep going in those directions, and for once I wasn't thinking about jumping ship and overhauling life and wiping the slate clean and starting over somewhere else again. Meh, maybe it's a normal part of getting a little older. Or maybe everything kind of fed off each other, and I wouldn't have even thought about settling into a relationship if I hated my job and was still feeling the need to make drastic changes that could send me fleeing. Maybe I never really let myself fall for people I dated in other places because I had one foot out the door before I even started.

Anyhow, somewhere along the way I seem to have become one of those "relationship people." Go figure. Clearly, I miss Goat for a million reasons about who he is, but I also just miss the boring little life we had going. So it's very interesting to realize that about yourself, and then find that you're single again and not sure what to do next. I could revert to "old single mode," filling my time but avoiding roots... but I think it would be at the expense of my shiny new ability to be content. I think, somehow, it will all answer itself without too much angst on my part. Or at least I hope. Or at least, with less angst than I had five years ago about all these things.

random

One of the fun and interesting things about this year is that I went from calling my bosses "Dr. So-and-So" to -- at their insistence -- calling them by their first names. Including the guy who the place is named after. Well, that was hard enough to do... but you really know that you've arrived as a "colleague" when you head out on a lunchtime trip to Jamba Juice and they insist that you take the front seat while they crawl into the back.

books vs. movies

My two competing interests these days seem to be my Netflix account and my LA public library card. For a while it was great to just come home and zone out to The Closer, but I finished season 3. So today we've got Freakonomics vs. season 1 of The Sopranos. I think we're tipping towards the book today... one episode of The Sopranos wasn't quite enough to suck me in, but the book's intro already has me on the edge of my seat. When I was in school, studying economics, I always said I was fascinated with it because, at heart, it's not really about money at all. It's the study of how people make decisions. And, as the authors put it, tantalizingly, it's the study "of how people get what they want." Might be right up my alley.

Plus, I think I'm ready to think again a little. Not that I haven't been thinking lately, just about different things. Since I arrived in LA, actually, I've blessedly learned a very important thing: how to be a being, doing person a bit more instead of always an asking and pondering sort of person. Really, I think I've learned how to live better in the last few years. But it's been awhile since I read anything that makes for good dinner table conversation.

The I Want to Die Post -- but it's not what you think

Oy, I just threw up on my feet. That was disgusting. I have apparently contracted some type of food poisoning or GI bug that put me in bed all day mostly wanting to die. I seem to have passed that point of the cycle, but am, unfortunately, still in no shape to get vertical. OK, now that I've grossed you out....

I've been doing alright the last couple of weeks. Up and down, understandably I suppose. About half of the last month, either Goat or I have been out of town on vacation and that made it easier. I've been doing pretty well here on my side of town, in the world where I was always known for myself, but I discovered last night that it's considerably harder to go back to the west side, where I feel like I was more known as half of a couple. So, it was much to my surprise that after a few weeks of cruising along, dealing with it when I come home at night but mostly engaging myself successfully in life during the day, I went to visit some friends on the west side and suddenly felt like I had jumped back a month in time to the first week, where I felt really fragile and emotional. OK, so I was also over there helping a friend plan her wedding, and was, unbeknown to me, well on my way to being violently ill, which didn't help, but let's just say I didn't have the fun, relaxing evening I'd hoped for.

Mostly I just feel really stuck in the "to have contact or not to have contact" department. The pros of contact are that I get to connect with a person I still have a strong connection to. The cons? Well, that's easy. Staying connected to a person I have strong feelings for but can't be with, which is gonna mess with my head.

But the truth is, this "no contact" thing? Not feeling much better right now. Will it in the long run? I don't know. Basically, when I talk to him, it just feels like this was the natural place things had to end up now, given reality or timing or whatever, and I just feel sad, which I can handle. But the longer I go without talking to him, the more hurt and flat-out-rejected I feel, as if I was weighed and measured and found lacking (basically, the difference between "we broke up" and "I got dumped," which can be a distinction quite lacking in subtlety).... which is bearable when I'm engaged in life during the day, but can tend to spiral down into Fear and Loathing in Los Angeles at the end of the day, or when I'm, say, laying in bed wanting to die from food poisoning. And yes, Ruthie, I know that was a run-on sentence.

busy bee

So, I have discovered this week that the problem with "keeping oneself busy," is that one is always busy.

And thus, tired.

It's actually been an OK week. Certainly full of ups and downs and a daily cry, the intensity of which has been downgraded from Red Alert ("Severe") to Yellow Alert (merely "Elevated"). Early in the week I pretty constantly felt like I was pushing down a giant knot in my stomach, but by today I've actually been able to get so lost in office chaos that I've been able to feel normal for a whole day at a stretch. The hard parts still come when somebody calls and asks how I'm doing -- so if you ask, and I say I'm fine, it just means I don't want to go there right now. I'm sort of reserving it as a topic for conversations that last more than 15 minutes, so that I actually have the chance to get through the knot that comes up, instead of having it get stuck there floating around in my stomach like I swallowed a beehive.

Because the hardest part of the day is still coming home, I've been happy to have plans the last few nights to connect with friends. But today I found myself totally, utterly exhausted (to the point of almost crying when my last client actually showed up, and then again when I ran into her mother in Target and was trying to gently, then firmly, suggest that she call me next week instead of trying to get a session out of my while I was buying shampoo).

Anyhow, I realized how much easier it was to spend time alone when I was in a relationship, because I knew that at the end of the day, I was going to connect with someone who wanted to hear all my stupid stories and trivial thoughts, and would stay on the phone while I brushed my teeth. Before we started dating, Goat asked for my phone number and I told him that I hated talking on the phone (someone, please, teach me how to flirt). Well, it turns out I was wrong, and in the last 2 1/2 years, other than weeks where one of us was really out of town (like, in the woods), I think we barely went a handful of days without saying goodnight, often talking for an hour or more. Now, to get some type of human connection, I have to make plans, go out, initiate. And I forgot how exhausting it is to be always talking about something with people because they're really not interested in the volumes of nothing that you really feel like talking about.

So how did that make you feeeeeeeel?

For better or for worse, being a therapist means that you are pretty hyper-aware of your feelings. Maybe not exactly in the moment, I mean, sometimes you just know you are really uncomfortable and you can't figure out what's going on, but with a little bit of processing and perspective I can usually come up with a name for mine (managing them, of course, is a totally different thing), and can tell the difference between them.

So for now, I just continue to be amazed at how I can feel so many of them over the course of each (and every) 24-hour period.

There are the big ones, yes, the basic rhymers -- mad, sad, glad. Then there are all the other ones, trailing along like toilet paper on your shoe... Mad and self-righteous feel good for a little while (hey, that jerk), but are quickly countered with defensiveness (but, really, he's not a jerk, and I wouldn't have dated a jerk anyway). Compassion skips out onto the playground (I know this sucks for him too) but is quickly tripped and has its lunch money stolen by confusion (it's complicated to find yourself empathizing with the person who broke your heart). Then sheer loneliness and missing someone pops up in the stew (as I seem to be out of practice being alone with my thoughts), but on occasion I can season it with relief (cost of a round trip across town in a fuel-efficient gas powered vehicle: $5.23. Wondering if the person you love will ever want to reduce the distance: priceless).

I think my saving grace as I "move on" is just that I've promised to let myself feel whatever I feel, to tell the truth about it, and not to be sorry for any of it.

Home

Why, for the love of all that is holy, did I want to come home from vacation? To my empty house, with the endless line of drunk Dodger fans edging toward the freeway outside my bedroom window? Oh, right, I wanted to start getting on with my life.

Well, maybe tomorrow. Tonight, the Times' Sunday crossword will have to do.

Broken Blog

Bleagh, so there's really nowhere easy to start here... so I will just say that I am very very sad right now, and my heart is profoundly broken and the only way I can make it better it is to keep getting out of bed every morning and filling my days with meaningful tasks and people who love me. I'm leaving out the gory details because I don't know who reads this silly old blog anymore, which has been mostly neglected for the last year while my life was cruising along swimmingly enough that I had less need for writing to sort through complicated emotions... so if you're reading it and you're confused, send me an email or a comment if you know me well enough to want to hear more and I'll reply offline. Whether or not you know the story, I'll warn you that I may allow this blog to be taken over, for the time being, as a place to sort through and chronicle both the good and the awful parts of the process of moving on.

Right now I'm on vacation, and that's been a mixed bag. Good to see family, yes, and old friends... who give you permission to be sad and scared and hurt and angry and then remind you how many times you've leapt into something new and scary and how you've been OK every time. People who knew you before this part of your life and who will know you long after. But part of being on vacation now feels like it's just putting off the inevitable, dreadful task of just getting on with life, when you're still not happy about accepting that that's the only option. Going home and changing your routine, your habits, your vacation plans. And the stupid little stuff, like your Facebook status feed which broadcasts to the world that you are "no longer listed as 'in a relationship.'"

I reassured my brother tonight that I am, relatively speaking, doing OK. I believe I will come out the other side, for all practical purposes, fine. I'm not despondent about the future, I don't think this means that I'll die alone with 16 cats, or that I'll forever spurn the advances of well-meaning suitors for fear of getting hurt again. It's just that right now, I fall asleep feeling like I lost my best friend, and no matter how much my head can make sense of it, my heart feels like something is very, very wrong.

First Fruits!

Prom Night

After a few years off, we've been invited to a glut of themed parties lately! How fun. An Old School Rap Party, a SuperHero birthday (which we actually missed, sadly), and now, PROM!!

100K

My "new" car (guess I've got to stop calling it that one of these days) just rolled over 100,000 miles on the way home from work! I'm not sure why I expected fireworks. It did bring back great memories of being in my old car, Pete the Jetta, when it hit 100K -- my college roommate Ruth and I were on a road trip to southern Utah in 1999, and we were at the entrance to Arches National Park when it hit 99,999... so we drove around the park entry sign for five minutes until it turned. Yeah, we were dorks. This time, I was just driving home from work. How boring. But in general this car (my civic) has just been a trusty, sturdy, dependable ride, no complaints, but lacking the adventurous character of Pete the Jetta, who used to die every time I'd slow down and turn at the same time, whose tailpipe fell off somewhere in Indiana (don't worry, I bought him a new one)... and who, by the end, I had to park facing down a hill every night so I could push start him in the morning. Funny how long I put up with him (six years?) and still had a hard time letting him go, even after he'd gotten to the point where I could no longer count on getting from A to B with any consistency. I can't even name this car... For awhile I thought he might be a Stanley, but even that didn't really stick. And this one, I haven't really let him take me anywhere. No random road trips, no cross-country moves loaded down with everything I own, nearly dragging along the highway, thinkin' there's nothing that could go wrong a little duct tape couldn't keep workin' for a few more miles.

Sigh...

Another six weeks, please...

It's just about six weeks exactly from groundhog day, and winter appears to be very, very gone. It's still March and we hit 87 degrees yesterday. I actually had no idea it was really that hot, I thought for sure it was just in the 70s and I was a bigger pansy than usual as I was outside running around. Now I don't feel so crazy. Who knew the ice cream truck would be trolling the streets eight seconds after the start of spring?

Anyhoo, just thought I'd post a little update that despite the number of times I blog when I'm frustrated about work, life is good these days. Despite the whining (mine), I really like my job, really enjoy a lot of my clients, and feel like I'm settling in well. I don't earn very much money at this particular job, but I love my coworkers, I set my schedule, and I have three day weekends. And for this year, the sanity has been worth it. I have potlucks with my girlfriends on Tuesday nights, I play Ultimate, I have a social life again. I took up sewing again, I have a Netflix queue, I finally finished all three of the novels that I bought a year ago in anticipation of eventually having free time to read, and a few more. I work hard for my clients, and when I'm not at work, I graciously allow myself to think about non-dramatic, un-angsty, enjoyable topics. I go to church when I can, the singing part still makes me cry every time, but in a good way. I'm in love with a pretty amazing guy, and we have totally nerdy dates where we do the Times crossword puzzle together online before we go to bed. I have decent health insurance. I try to ride my bike a lot.

I might be whining again by tomorrow, but for today, I can't complain.

Try this at home

After a rough month or so at work after the holidays, something needed to change.

Thursdays, especially... my day chock-full of one after the other 13-year-old-boy, these poor kids who come see me in my dungeon because they're failing their classes or getting kicked out of class too much, and they're too old to think it's cool to have a "special friend" at school but still too young to actually understand complicated concepts like responsibility and choices and options in, oh, say, going to class, doing their homework, and not talking back to the teacher.

So, I did what any self-respecting professional would do: I started wearing fun socks to work.

And it actually worked. Who knew? Pink, rainbow, striped, polka-dotted, knee-highs... for some reason, they make a world of difference. Most people have no idea, but I can see them from my chair when my knees are crossed, peeking out. And in a statistically completely insignificant random sampling of one person (me), I have conclusive evidence that fun socks make a long day a lot easier to bear. It worked so well I tried it on Monday this week, with equally spectacular results.

Yes, THAT Corey Haim

Last weekend, I played Ultimate with none other than the one, the only, Corey Haim. Remember Lucas, anyone? He lives here in LA, and is filming his "reality" TV show (I have to put that word in quotes now that I actually have friends who are writers for reality TV shows), and is, supposedly, a huge Ultimate player. So, his people called up some of our people and arranged a permit (expensive and hard to come by) with the parks dept for us to hold a weekly pick-up game at a local park. The game brought out a huge contingent of Ultimate players with the promise of a spectacle, a viewing of a former Teen Idol (TM), and a chance to be on TV.

Corey came about an hour and a half after the game started, and upon arrival, changed into an outfit his producer had brought for him, including a brand-new pair of cleats fresh from the box. Then he smoked a few cigarettes. Unfortunately, by this time, we had so many people at the game that he was having a hard time making it onto the field (when there are too many people, you have to call "last back!" when your team gets scored on and run to the end zone before everybody else in order to rotate into the game). In the end, we let him in the game a few times (hey, he did score us the permit and all) and he ended up playing about four points and then spending the rest of the afternoon hitting on some girl on the other side of the park. We proceeded to enjoy ourselves on the field his producers had rented for the afternoon...

Anyhow, it was quite entertaining. Very surreal, yes, but he was a nice enough guy -- I even feel a little bit bad sort of making fun of him here. Who knows if we'll make it to TV or get left on the cutting room floor -- in any case, I got hugged by one of the Coreys, and he even called me sweetie.

File Under: I went to grad school for THIS!??!

Round about the time, oh, say, last June... when I was parading proudly across a stage to get my degree, and I was all proud of my massive achievement of conquering grad school, I wasn't spending too much time thinking about what the day-to-day life of a therapist would include. I mean, yeah, hey, I imagined it would have some rough moments, but I did not really think that it would include calling a client's home and being hung up on not once, but twice in a row, and then (because I am either really dedicated to passing along information about my clients' safety to their parents, or I am a dimwitted glutton for unsophisticated punishment) calling back again and hearing the person on the other end of the phone pick it up, belch at me, and hang it up again.

However, I am comforted by the fact that Natalie also finds herself wondering why she got a Master's degree to remind grown men they need to take showers and eat breakfast.

And just where, exactly, were you at 5:30pm on the night in question?

This is a picture of the room where I get to see clients at one of my campuses... reminds me of a police interrogation room. Fabulous for helping middle school kids feel comfortable! No windows, no couches, no natural light. Just me, some colored pencils, and travel Connect Four. Don't you wish you could come see me here?

Bleagh (blog)

So, my lenten discipline was to take the time to blog every day. You know, sort of a self-imposed commandment to stop, look, listen, think, process, and stop taking every waking moment for granted. Yeah, I know, we're seven days into lent, here I am popping up for the first time. Around last Friday I realized that it was a horrible thing to pick, should have just become a vegetarian again for 40 days, because it's so much easier to eat a vegetable than it is to be intentional, you know, and now I'm stuck because after a few days in, I knew I was either going to be a failure or a quitter, and neither sounded like very much fun. So with a little bit of "let up on the perfectionism for 10 seconds, please" encouragement from Goat, I decided doing something was way better than doing nothing, so here I am.

Anyhow, the only thing of note today (seeing as how I have 5 minutes to put my shoes on and be waiting on the front porch) is another shockingly, stark recognition of the power of culture. Many, if not most, of my clients have parents who were raised in another culture, and communication with them is not something I for granted anymore. One of my clients has a mother who has, several times now, in an attempt to tell me that she wants me to close her son's case, simply hung up the phone on me mid-sentence. So, because this feels so completely, ridiculously rude to me and I am conditioned to take it as a complete affront to the services I provide (good! free! therapy! as we say in the office... why don't you want your good free therapy?!!?), I was ranting and raving around the office about this woman who is a grown adult and cannot just tell me she doesn't want to come in anymore. To which my supervisor just chuckled, and asked, "she wouldn't happen to be a Russian immigrant?", and went on to relay tales from her cousin (also a Russian immigrant) about how people in certain social circles in the Old Country have learned or adapted as ways to get their point across. Not entirely or deliberately meant to be offensive... just trying to communicate.

Well, I don' t have the luxury of choosing how I want to communicate back to her, I have to go through due process of leaving another message, then mailing a letter, then waiting two weeks before I close the case... which is frustrating since I already know that's what she wants done. But what I really want to do is leave a message on her answering machine, reminding her that if her goal is to help her son grow into a successful adult (in America), he needs to learn some good old fashioned American cultural communication methods, like, say, actually telling another human being what you want.

I swear, sometimes I get frustrated with my kids, but it's usually their parents that drive me up the wall.

No, not the candy

If there is one thing in the world that warms the cockles of my heart more than nerds, it may very well be nerds in love. And if there are two things, the next one would have to be nerds in love learning how to dance.

I just returned from a Ceroc dance lesson at Caltech. Not only was it a blast, but let's just say that the cockles of my heart are very, very warm.