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.

An exercise in the other side of the tracks

Nothing profound about my journey to the literal and figurative other side of the tracks since I wrote that last post and comment yesterday... just the usual surreality. I was exhausted after work Thursday night (which, blessedly, is the end of my work week), and needed a good cry to be ready to move on. Sometimes I just get so overwhelmed, not only with my clients' stories but also just the task, proving to be exhaustive, of learning how to do all the stuff that comes along with my job that I didn't learn in school (there is, apparently, a reason that most therapists I know say they don't feel like they know how to do their job until they've been doing it 10 years... I suppose teachers and doctors, etc, would concur).

Anyhow.... some days I just need a good cry to deal with the stress. So I had one last night, and then I drove over to Goat's office holiday party. The theme was Animal House, complete with togas, slippery nipples, Dance-Dance-Revolution, karaoke, fries and fried cheese sticks that waiters were passing out on fancy silver trays. We danced until well past midnight. This morning, I drove to Beverly Hills for a doctor's appointment, and then continued along a scenic route up Santa Monica Boulevard (scenic for exploring purposes) and over the Hollywood Hills, past stores where I could probably trade my paycheck for a sweater... and I kept on going to Burbank, having lunch with a friend from my program and doing a little holiday shopping. It was a lovely day.

Oh, and yes, my doctor's office is in Beverly Hills. I picked Cedars-Sinai as my medical center because:

1. It was in my insurance group
2. I don't care much whether I live in a seedy neighborhood, but dammit, if my insurance will cover it, I'm done messing around with medical groups who only take cash, who lose your referrals, who refer you to doctors in BFE who don't speak English anytime you need a specialist, and who weigh you in the waiting room.

nothing, really

I am doing nothing right now.

And while there are days in the recent past when I did not like the doing of nothing, because it was strange and foreign, today is not one of those days. Today I like the nothing. Today I love the nothing. Today, I want to walk off into the sunset barefoot on the beach with nothing, hand in hand, knowing I'm going to get lucky later.

Of course, nothing feels so great right now because I know that in two hours I will pick up Becky D in Long Beach and we will gloriously, and with much verbosity, do nothing together for the next 24 hours. Because, really, too much nothing by yourself is no fun at all. But after a few years of always something, even though this nothing stuff is still pretty weird, and I don't expect it to last for long because I'll do what I usually do and fill time with something, anything -- right now, for today, I'm kinda digging the nothing.

Happy Saturday

You know how sometimes a project just kind of languishes around on your "to do" list for a really long time and then one day, you just wake up and decide it's finally time??

I just organized four years worth of photos on my computer.

Blink

During a recent visit to Boston, Natalie and I tried to get one good picture. Apparently, however, she's a blinker. How did I never know this before? We were pretty much 0-for-20.

Also, Hi from Vegas! We were there a few weeks ago for a wedding.

Ferdinand Ma-julie-an

I was a little explorer today! Now that I've finally gotten (most of) my stuff unpacked in my new place (or at least to the point where I can find what I need in the remaining boxes), I took a little time today to explore my new "neighborhood." Technically, where I live is pretty central to everything I do, but not really close to anything. I live in a little 3-street neighborhood tucked in between Dodger Stadium and Elysian Park. So today I just headed out on my bike and did a little 11-mile loop down the hill through Chinatown, then heading northwest on Sunset Boulevard through Echo Park and Silver Lake... then getting really lost on the way home because I forgot my map. I knew what direction to keep heading, but I ended up biking up all these big hills only to discover that the streets didn't connect and I had to bike down the other side and up another one. All in all, it was a nice day for a bike ride... I put my new panniers on the side so I didn't have to carry anything... and when I got home there was a nice big bowl of ice cream waiting for me in the freezer to reward me for all those hills. Yum.

Stipendgate 2007 -- the irony continues

No, they haven't decided to give me the money after all. I've pretty much given up on ever seeing any of it, and while I still think it's a horrible thing, my rage is subsiding, which is at least helping me move on with life. However, I did find out a tidbit of info from one of my advisers at Fuller, who sits on the board that was administering the stipends. She said that the loss of the stipends actually may be a product of the fact that the DMH got a huge amount of money from the state this year, but all that money came along with a whole new set of restrictions surrounding how/where they spend their money, and it seems that perhaps this program was not on the list of acceptable options.

So, in an ironic nutshell, it seems that the DMH isn't giving out the stipends because they have so much more money this year.

Is it ironic that the Department of Mental Health is driving me crazy?

I'm having a rough week. I know that life is not fair, but I really don't like it very much when it's not fair to me.

There, I'll just say it, and then proceed with my whiny post, and you can choose to read or to politely navigate away, somewhere cheerier.

I've started my new job, and it's going well, but still filled with all the uncertainties and flailing that come along with a new job. But Monday morning, I checked my email, and there was another email from the agency which is administering the DMH stipends. Before I opened it, I was wondering how much longer the meeting (see post below) had been postponed for. But then I opened it, and the news was much, much worse. My joking prediction to Goat was right. There's no money, they wrote, and boom, poof, the stipend I was "awarded" is gone.

The stipend amounted to about 25% of the salary I'd be earning this year, and a large reason I felt comfortable accepting the job at this salary is because I was counting on the stipend money. I'm torn between wanting to just move on with life, chuck it up to a case of Life's Not Always Fair, practice some of that Christian forgiveness... and wanting to figure out if I can sue their pants off. Really, I'm sure I will arrive at an option somewhere in between, but mostly this week I just feel really kicked in the stomach. The agency administering the program had never indicated that the funding wasn't already secured and guaranteed from the DMH. How could they have promised us money that they knew wasn't there yet, without telling us that part? The kicker is that one stipulation of receiving the funds was that we find employment with a DMH agency within 90 days of graduation... so all of us wanting to be compliant with our end of the bargain had already accepted and started jobs before we found out there's no money. I don't know if I have any recourse against the agency who offered us the stipends, but I feel like I can't quite let it rest that all I got was an email of "sincere apology" that the money I was counting on didn't exist.

I also started apartment hunting this week, and realized for the first time how much LA really costs. I guess I've been extensively sheltered from the cost of living here; having lucked out on a huge apartment for really reasonable rent for the last two years. I went to go view a couple of studio apartments in my price range, and they were in neighborhoods that even I wouldn't live in (and up until now I thought I would live just about anywhere).

I know I'll be OK, but I just feel a whole mess of icky things this week... angry, self-righteous, weepy, indignant, cynical, hopeless. Honestly, I'm feeling a little despondent that I have a Master's degree and I'm worrying about affordable housing. Will I be able to live, and eat, and occasionally take a weekend trip? Yes. No problem. But even though I do, somehow, still think this will all work out just fine, and I will like (maybe even love?) my job (can you put a price on that?), I catch myself wondering, this week, if I made a poor decision.

This is when Anne Lamott comes in handy, right?

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent... except yourself.

I just received an email from the institute that is dispersing DMH funds, stating that the stipends (which were supposed to begin being sent in June) are on hold until they have a hearing in October. I forwarded the email to Goat, with a snide comment about the inadequacy of the DMH and a prediction that I'd never see the money.

Only, I didn't send it to Goat. I accidentally hit "reply" and sent it back to the institute.

Anyone know of a good recipe for crow?

Did you miss me talking about the heat?

Apparently I came back to LA, to pack up my apartment, just in time for a heat wave.

It's so hot in my bedroom that my candles are melting, without being lit.

High Sierra

I bought a sweater at Mervyn's last week. A flimsy little cotton, lightweight, stretchy zip-up thing that will be perfect for work this winter (because I live somewhere where winter temperatures occasionally dip to, say, 65 degrees), with a completely-for-looks-because-it's-totally-useless flimsy cotton hood that only covers half your head.

And what brand was this little ditty? High Sierra.

Now, I know this sweater was not designed with the high Sierra in mind, but I'm not sure why a company who makes flimsy sweaters decided to call themselves High Sierra. Even Low Sierra Day Hike would have been a stretch. Maybe City Park on a Very Dry, Windless Summer Afternoon. I have been to the high Sierra, and this sweater would do you absolutely no good at 12,000 feet, except maybe for a pillow, only then your companions would scoff at you for wasting a lot of perfectly good space and weight in your pack hauling something that only has one function, and really, nobody wants that, right?

Anyhooo.... speaking of the high Sierra, I'm heading there tomorrow morning! And, in an extremely condensed version of the last week of my life which I will expand upon later, I accepted a job starting in September, so I can head off to the woods without the weight of having no idea what the future brings. I'll be stationed in Bridgeport and backpacking in Yosemite until the end of August!

penciled in

Does it make me a bad person, that one (of many) reasons I'm happy this week is because after a month or so of no schedule, I have a day-timer now, and it has things written in it?

911: The Irony Continues

This would be funny if it weren't so... well, I'm OK, so it is kind of funny by now.

Through absolutely positively no fault of my own (that's my disclaimer in case the insurance companies are scouring the internet for information) I was in an accident on the freeway last night. Someone in a lane traveling at 10 mph decided to change lanes abruptly into the lane where I was traveling at 50 mph, and, well, you do the math. So, armed with all my new information about the state of LA emergency services, what did I do? I didn't call 911, because I knew I'd be on hold. So I called 411 and asked to be connected with the highway patrol office. They connected me to an office that was closed. So I called 911 to reach CHP, where I was, predictably, on hold for 5 minutes before I gave up, because my car was still driveable and the other car was leaving anyway and it no longer made sense for me to be sitting on the side of the road on hold when I could go somewhere much safer and more comfortable and be on hold later.

Anyhow, today, I looked up the CHP number on their website, so that I could call them directly (instead of calling 911) and make a report. So, I called the local number of their Los Angeles office... and what do I hear?

"You have reached 911..." which was then promptly replaced by a human voice waiting to handle my emergency, now that I was sitting around in my apartment drinking iced tea and totally not having an emergency of any sort.

So, the new moral of the story, which makes me feel ever-so-slightly better, is that it's still kind of OK to have an emergency in LA, as long as it's during business hours.

Wii love boxing!

A few other pics from my travels are up at the photo blog...

Update

So, I turned in my keys at my internship site yesterday, after a couple long days of dotting I's and crossing T's in all my charts. Leaving that place came with too many goodbyes that I wasn't ready to say. Today I throw in some laundry, pack up, run some errands, and hop on a plane for a few weeks of much-anticipated vacation. Tonight to Boston, a few days with Natalie, then Goat flies in and we drive up to New Hampshire for a week at Squam Lake with his family. Then, hop a plane straight to Seattle and head to eastern Washington for a week at a lake with my family and a few extra days in Seattle (partially enjoying Seattle, partially avoiding July in Pasadena). The current plan is that I'll be in the Yosemite backcountry for a good chunk of August, guiding for Sierra Treks, and then when September rolls around, I'll find a job and a new place to live - not sure exactly where yet but for now the requirements are that it reduces the 30-mile commute to Goat. So, September is the new horizon I can see to, but beyond which I cannot see. And for now I'm OK with that. (I fully expect the angst to ratchet up in the fall, but in the meantime I'm planning on enjoying some vacation).

Here are some photos from graduation...

Security Guard

So we have this security guard at work... at least, I think that is his job title, and he does wear a uniform that makes him look like one. And while I can't say I've ever felt unsafe at work, at least not during the daytime, it is on the outskirts of a sketchy area and right next door to an adult clinic that serves the chronically/severely mentally ill. So I would at least like the security guard to sort of look like he's ready to deal with an incident, should one arise. To start with, he's about 5'6" and maybe weighs a buck ten. But aside from that, theoretically, I don't think he should be sitting on the bench outside all afternoon with his shoes and socks off, picking between his toes. I mean, I just think it would take a while to get them back on if he needed to chase someone or something.

Done... "ish"

Well, I have survived, and graduated, and celebrated, and all that jazz! I'll post pics this weekend. Graduation itself was on the long, boring side (it took an hour and 45 minutes to read all the names during the ceremony) but we survived. I only cried a couple of times (so far), not from being sad, just from the emotional upheaval of going that hard/fast/strong for so long and then being done. Actually, I'm kind of weaning myself a bit... I finish off with my clients and mountains of charts in the next two weeks, but at least there's no class or papers to deal with, so when I leave the office, my time is my own. Strangely, yesterday I was at work for 11 hours but when I was driving home, I felt like I was getting off early (don't feel sad for me or anything, I was only working for about 6-7 of those hours, the rest was wandering around the office in between appointments trying to figure out what needed to be done and hanging out with the other interns). The funny thing is, after having my parents staying here for a week, and all the busyness of graduation and guests and being with people every waking moment for the past 3 weeks, all I could think about during the day was going home, by myself, and staring at the ceiling for a few hours. Then, of course, driving home, I got this weird, unsettled, lonely feeling at knowing I was going to be all by myself with nothing to do for a few hours.

Don't worry, I got over it. But it was strange while it lasted.

Of the keeping in of the proverbial loop

Just to keep you posted...

Classes are done. Three papers to go. One apartment to clean. Two parents to collect from the airport. Four grad events to go to. One party to throw. And.... (drumroll please...)

Three hundred hours. 305, to be precise, as of today. I got my hours done last Tuesday so I will, officially, legally, without-even-having-to-fudge be done and graduated as of Saturday (assuming those three papers get done), even if all the rest of my clients for the month of June get lost, or forget, or have family emergencies.