Changing Lives For The Better...And Forever.

Today is weird because instead of thinking that I'm on time and being late, I'm feeling late and it's early. That's messed up, right? I think I'm wasting time and more of it just keeps being there, ready to be spun out and slept on. Ready to be all interneted and thought through. Here are some thoughts: you know how everything works out for me? That process could go faster. I worry I may have to fund-raise for my next Unicorn Camp; does that mean I'm not supposed to go? Remember how Benevolent Texan told me about a "life of peace not a life of ease"? Well, how am I supposed to identify the peace versus the ease, how do I know when I'm working too hard on something? I think the answer is: when it breaks.

Other thoughts: what should I do? What is going to happen? Like, earth-shattering stuff going on in this pretty head. I'm also playing a game wherein I don't ask myself the questions I sort of want to, like why so-and-so hasn't called? or, you know, have you made a horrible choice that will ruin everything? I probably haven't, and anyway, what if everything IS ruined? Will that stop me from singing in my car today, loud, and imaging hugs and kisses while wishing for riches? No, indeed, it will not. Will the stretching of time impede the flow of my rhyme? The internet answers in the negative. Alrighy then. Back to the resumes!

No one gets what they deserve because nobody deserves anything.

Yeah, me! It was one of those weekends from way back when I wasn't home any night before 4am. I woke up at 2 this afternoon and enjoyed some pasta, proclaiming to myself: "I cried at work on Thursday! I deserve this!" We are the generation that bought more shoes and we get what we deserve, says some English guy (bloke?). It's a nice math but broken theology: grace is given and not earned.

Suze Orman is on PBS teaching me about how to be a Powerful Woman who has Money and is Not Crying All the Time. The irony is that I wouldn't be watching PBS if I could afford cable. Maybe that isn't irony--it's a lesson.

I called Mama Friend while I was sobbing, because I don't just need supportive listening--all my friends are social workers and bleeding hearts, they are all wicked validaters like they work in a parking garage--I wanted someone to tell me what to do. Mostly when I think about my life it is with a rousing soundtrack, a swelling sense of gratitude and wonder for scrappiness and good luck, a cinematic montage of the gal from Toledo making good. Sometimes though I get exhausted and tired of scrappy sass and struggle and I want someone else to drive so that I can take a nap or mess with the radio. It's a metaphor, sorta, except I actually woke up at 5am to the sound of thunder and the knowledge that my convertible was filling up with water. It's conventionally called "a two person job" but I made it a "resourceful lady and broom job" but not without some tears. So when I say I want someone else to drive, I mean: I want someone to put the top up in a thunderstorm. It could be worse: no car, no arms. It could be better: a car that works, someone to wake up and help me.

I haven't earned all the goodness I've got so I can't earn anymore. I should be prepared, however, for maximum awesome, just in case, which is why I should get in the shower. It's fucking five o'clock. Mmmmm Sundays.

Bikes! Bikes!

Another tale from the porch: my car battery was dead, so I had Fluffy-headed Social Worker come over in order to drain the life from her car and bring precious Cabrio back to me. It seemed like a good excuse to get Cute Boy to ride his bike down and, you know, fix something that is broken. It did not work, but we were on the porch, and that's always a good time. We went for a bike ride and it was fun, fun, fun. Not surprisingly, Cute Boy was on one of them bikes made of pipe cleaners and thin rubber, so he can fly while riding no-hands and I'm cruising in my 600lb couch on wheels. Fluffy-head borrowed Roommate's ride and popped some major .2" wheelies. We stopped in a Whirlaway (ick) for a refreshing High Life and there was a birthday party! They passed cake around! The cake had banana pudding and strawberries! I always think I don't care for cake, until there's pudding in it. So, after a nice time with good friends and a tour of Logan Square (super up-and-coming, we're on the cover of the Reader!) I was in bed by 1:00am. It was like high school. It was fun.
As I'm typing this, I receive an email from the downtown office: "I brought a Mexican cake called Tres Leches with Mocha. Please help your self to a piece in the kitchen." I can eat only the tiniest sliver of Tres Leches, as it's rich creaminess is too, too, too much for a beer-cured belly. Back when I worked in Pilsen, we had Tres Leches cake for every occasion, and no one could tell me what the third milk was: everyone knows condensed milk, and then regular milk, so we decided the third was goat, or human. Turns out it's evaporated milk, according to Wikipedia. Yeah it is, if evaporated milk is made from the powdered dreams of sleeping baby angels!

Cake! Cake!

FWD: Healthy Sexuality for People with Developmental Disabilities

Which is the email I received from my former therapist today. Oh, snap! Good one.

In the way that things happen all funny and overlapping, I've heard some really awesome Bad Therapist stories in the last two days. Blind Therapist Who Only Talked About Herself and Makeup? That was a good one. And The One Who Moved His Client Into His Home? She sued and now has a nice cabin in the Catskills! Melba, from back in the day, she went into Charter Hospital at 17 and left with a married psychotherapist boyfriend and an STD! Mine just sort of wanted to be my mom, and my guru, so I had to break up with her and let God lead me to the Therapist That Made Me Into a Unicorn. She thinks my sexuality is plenty healthy, and you do, too.

Highlights

I took a Predictive Index test for work as part of getting trained to administer Predictive Indexes to others, at work. The first day introduced me to three major topics of interest: 1) The new Post-It pen, 2) the trainer, and 3) what will the Predictive Index reveal about ME?

1) Post It has a new highlighter with a post-it flags dispenser in the handle. It is so rad. Mine was blue. Bomb pop.

2) On day one, it was still mostly questions about his big mountain man beard. On day two, when he revealed that he lives in a log cabin in a national forest with no electricity, that he made the logs, that he chose to do this after having been a homicide detective for 15 years, which was after his career as a psychologist, well then. That was it.

3) I was bored, and then I was thinking that I am arrogant cause I'm always ignoring the trainer and doodling and frustrated that people don't get things. This lead to wondering what I would do if my Predicative Index revealed that for all my empathic talk and career choices I am, in fact, a madly driven and highly domineering personality; what if I should run companies and, like, crush the opposition? What if I am entirely wrong about myself, or missing some major axis by which I think I care about people but am actually narcissistically manipulating everyone I know to meet some tremendous drive to power?

In fact, I am a big beating heart, I am so extroverted and people-centered that I may well be a Care Bear, and on all the other indexes I am way left of center: little drive to dominate, little drive to conform, and little patience with routine. Which when I type it out seems fine, desirable, in fact: go me. It's the effect of flattening, though. What about intellectual pursuits? What about insightful mind and introspection? How come it doesn't mention my hair?

It actually dovetailed with the experience of being 30, of going to the Mountain, all these bits and mendings-- I was born like that, all heart and love to give, but luck of the draw: I was born into the family I was born into, and now they are calling me, saying sorry, saying all the things I wanted someone to say before, before when it hurt more. And the poorly constructed shell gets hacked away, revealing Damaged Bear, the bear that was and loves the damaged. Oh, if it weren't for my damn Predictive Index I would go and live with Mountain Man in his Mountain Lair with his obsessive love; except that I need people like oxygen and without electricity how do you update your blog? Carrier pigeon?