The good old days got you KILLED.

Solstice was lovely this year. L's best friend spent the night and it was bathed in sun which was nice - even if they were complete turkeys and declined to incorporate a sprinkler day into the sleepover events. Why u wasting perfectly good 70-degree days, Alaska kids? Because you'd rather play Minecraft and Little Kitty, Big City? Oh. Of course. As you were.

I think I was around 6 when I had my first sleepover. I mainly remember sleeping over at J's house, which was (almost) always a fun experience. She lived in Paris, TX while I lived about 20 minutes outside of town in Maxey (55-65 mph speed limit depending on the stretch of highway if that helps and if you're a math person). We bonded over both loving dance and classic movie musicals, both having unique names for the 90s and little brothers who were ~3 years younger. That's about where the similarities ended, although it was pretty thrilling when we discovered we were both Virgos. 

P, her mom, ran the music department at the local college and was a gifted and disciplined musician and director. I'm not sure I ever heard P raise her voice? At anyone? They were also one of the whitest families I have ever encountered. I remember my mind being blown that you can boil hotdogs to cook them? And then they just...explode? I don't know if my Almond Mom of a mom just never made hot dogs or if they were considered to be a Grill Thing like Brats (which, to be accurate, I never recall eating...because of the possibility of pork contaminating the Kosher Meat, maybe?). They also offered me cheese on toast as a breakfast option. The what?! Exotic to young me.

Today I'm catching up on paperwork (not worried about hours anymore! That resolved right up!) and laundry and hopefully going to the gym. That's it. That's the whole thing. 

S took N and my dad to a night market downtown last night and I stayed home with the girls. This was nice because they entertained each other and I got a lot of writing done. Tonight he's saying he wants to have dinner with his parents but the way he phrased it was odd; it sounded like maybe I wasn't invited? Or that, possibly, L wouldn't necessarily need to come? But maybe?

This week has been busy enough that I lost track of when I'd run out of medication and now I'm down to one tablet. Oops. So now I'm debating whether I should try to split the mg between tomorrow and Monday, but I will for sure need to get a refill on Monday morning around 7:30 AM which means an ungodly early morning for L. *sigh* I am. So tired. Of. My brain.

OH AND NOW WE HAVE STARTED WORLD WAR III. FUCKING FANTASTIC.

If I Don't Do It Someone Else For Sure Will. Right? RIGHT?

People like to say that "it's a bit of a desert up here!" for things like: lawyers, healthcare specialists, and mental health. There are reasons for that, I'm sure. And they range from extremely hard (some would say prohibitively so) requirements to get certified in the aforementioned to there just not being the fucking business hours in place. I'm trying to get my shit together to see a psych again, and while the neuropsych and I eventually got on the same page* I have yet to find a psychiatric counseling service that will see me outside of Normal Business Hours so like, if I'm working I...don't get to be mentally healthy, I guess? Look, I get that there is probably someone out there who has the availability I'm looking for, but it's a lot gate-keep-y. That's all I'm saying. No, wait, I'm also saying it's not really all that surprising that people turn to AI for therapy. Which I haven't done thus far, and probably won't, because maybe I can use the Omaha student counseling if I get up at, like, 5:00 AM my time. If they have availability. Jesuslambofgod****.

So a week ago standard earth time my Fieldwork Educator 2 (heretoafter to be referred to as FWE2) didn't do their sessions because they were getting married, so I drove to Palmer to shadow someone who is a PT and does pediatric pelvic floor-type things. "But wait, Clara," you might say, "Those things don't go together!" But they do, actually, because of things like toileting. There were lots of models of pelvic muscles and the main takeaway is that there are quite a few of those and one in particular is looped around other anatomical structures like a chump and can get all looped up and tight and in addition to that all of them can get tight and if there's constipation that can mean that the stool just can't get passed due to being too hard. Also: abdominal muscles and your serratus anterior play a big role in pushing fecal matter out so if there's some brain-body breakdown there or even just plain ol' weakness a kid might have a harder time pushing. You know, the good old valsalva maneuver. Anyway I learned that if a kid exhales and their ribcage doesn't pull down and in there's likely some upper abdominal weakness, so it might be good to work on that re: toileting. I also learned that they've changed the "I Love You" abdominal massage technique since last I checked, so here you go. The business starts at 1:24. You can also palpate the iliocecal sphincter and give that a gentle massage to get things going. Otherwise it is, yes, mostly fiber and water intake. And I learned that I am correct in being suspicious that internal rotators over-firing are somewhat related to toileting problems. And if your perineal muscles are always firing they have a hard time relaxing so you need to fatigue them by squeezing them until you have to relax them. Which is somewhat counterintuitive. But.

This week I observed a session in fancy house in a somewhat fancy part of town. The lady of the house had been volunteering at VBS earlier in the day and I thought was maybe a glass in on something? I don't know why I thought that. But it just...seemed like it? Immaculate house. A skillion Amazon packages coming to the door. VBS. Wine (?)

Okay. *sigh* Nothing is really wrong - it's even sunny again today! But I am having a hard time with Friday night, and nothing is really right. Hope the weather is not being a butt today!

*Yes, I am trying to schedule. No, I understand you can't schedule because you don't have the schedule out now and you will contact me when you are ready, it's just that I need to tell you the windows I have just in case it's interesting or necessary in the future when you are ready to schedule and it's sunny and I have motivation now and I would like to tell you before I lose motivation which is extremely likely to have happened by the time you call me back to schedule and we're playing answering machine** tag lol. So: December. It's December. Wewt w00t***.

**Dating myself. Not like that! I don't buy myself flowers. Flowers: ew.

***I am the cringe, children!

****Update: nope! I don't get to use it unless I live in Nebraska or Arizona. Mother. Fucker. ...okay. As you were.

Christ Alive It's Only June *Thousand-Yard Stare*

All my nostalgia-tinted childhood stories are finally coming in handy for OT sessions. One OT I'm shadowing uses the Antecedent-Behavior-Consequence (ABC) model, but calls it the Action-Behavior-Consequence mode in large part because I think it's easier for kids to comprehend it. Although...action is something I think of as something you do not something that happens to you but I'm not fixing to yuck your yum. So far I've used The One Where My Brother Shot an Arrow at Me (Like, a Real One With a Real Bow)* and the adult story where a puppy showed up at our door. Ones I'm considering using in future are:

- The One Where We Rode Our Bikes Toward Town From the Country and Freaked Our Parents Out
- The One Where I Wouldn't Fucking Stop Riding Goats and That's How I Broke My Arm
- The One Where a Kid We Knew Fell In the Pond and Couldn't Swim and I Ran Clear Across the Pasture .25 Miles to Get the Parents
- The One Where I Punched My Brother In the Nose Because My Godfather Told Me To

I'm sure others will come to me as we go. Most of them don't apply to the specific situations - but the above do. I think.

Every so often I'll be minding my business, driving my car, doing the dishes, folding laundry and thinking of nothing in particular (dangerous!) when - BAM: the chorus of "Good Lives" by Eve 6 will blindside me. Ugh.

I'm starting to see the t-rex arm and autism eyes everywhere I go, most of all in myself.  ...but I wonder if the questionnaire could include more "Did you force your childhood friends to reenact the same scene from Star Trek several times in which nothing exciting was going on at all? Or are you neurotypical?" In retrospect, my great-grandmother was for sure autistic. Her strategy when I knew her was to clutch a crumpled tissue in her non-dominant hand at all times to disguise the t-rex arm.

Every time I drive toward Eagle River (there are eagles; there is a river), I pass by an Arby's that has had the same sign up for over two years now: NT management needed. I always autocorrect that to "neurotypical". Neurotypical management needed! Get out of here with your neurodiverse selves! We don't like your type 'round here.

I would like to compare and contrast the two versions of Annie I currently have access to and watch waaaaaaaaay often because L loves her some spunky orphans:

• Annie (2014): It's fine. Not great, but fine. Everybody does a fairly good job and I do like the fake-out in the beginning when you think there's going to be one Annie but lol no you're wrong! Jamie Foxx doesn't do it for me as Daddy Warbucks; he doesn't really commit to the role in the sense that he doesn't shave his head. There's a nod to this later in the movie, but just...c'mon man. Shave your head or give the role to Samuel L. Jackson. Now that I want to see! Cameron Diaz does a decent job, but I never wanted to hear "Little Girls" reimagined as an early 2000s pop song and now, having heard it, I still don't. Also, it seems like she wanted to pay tribute to Carol Burnett but the producers failed to tell her that this wouldn't really make sense with the way the role is reimagined. Oh. Rose Byrne plays Grace and there has been the role of a random sleazy campaign manager added to the movie for no reason. Except! Perhaps the reason is that irl the actor is married to Rose Byrne and she talked the movie people into casting him so they could have a nice vacation in New York after shooting. Quvenzhane does a good job and carries the film if I'm honest. Hm. What else. They cut several songs and completely did away with the conceit of the fake parents being related to Ms. Hannigan which...I liked that! I never wanted her to be a decent human! Redemption? Ew. No thank you!
• Annie (1982): The one where L has historically said, "If I'm moving around and dancing, it's because this Annie makes me feel like dancing and I can't help it!" The best I've seen so far? But it's also, like, kind of a Specific Thing. Like, if you don't appreciate a 20s aesthetic you probably aren't going to appreciate this. Everyone knocks it out of the park in the sense that you can tell pretty much everyone who was cast cut their teeth on Broadway (or The West End, in Tim Curry's case ig?) and Carol Burnett is a national treasure so she can do whatever she likes. I remember watching it when I was 11 and wondering why the Grace character was so badass (the dance! The voice! The stage presence!) and then moving on with my life. It turns out she was so badass because she was played by fucking Ann Reinking, Bob Fosse's muse of stage and screen. So. That's why. I enjoy how they cast Tim Curry and Bernadette Peters as Ms. Hannigan's brother and (his) love interest. The only part I'm "meh" about is where they insert an excerpt of Camille to illustrate...something? Unclear. The pacing is reminiscent of a zany 1920s/30s screwball comedy which I'm always here for, and there are multiple references to The Depression and the weird dichotomy where Daddy Warbucks is as capitalist as they come while FDR is trying to get his New Deal stuff going. It would almost make sense to reimagine the concept during the time frame in which the 2014 version was set if they'd just pushed the recession aspect a little bit more? But idk. I can have some rigid thinking around film and casting (see my teen obsession with making Wheel of Time cast lists and being outraged that Andrea Parker was not cast in that one remake of The Avengers. Uma who?). But I also think that there should/could be a stage version set in Alaska (or Your Town USA! The trauma of colonialism is everywhere, baybee!) at the turn of the 19th/20th century in a boarding school. Some parts/songs rewritten, cast appropriately, but the broad strokes being the same. I think it could be an interesting concept and illustrate the point of oppressor/oppressed in a novel way. But! There is the question of why the fuck did someone decide Little Orphan Annie was a good idea in the first place? Was it the fantasy that is you're Good Enough, someone In Power will eventually See It and Fix Your Life For You? It doesn't appear that Annie started her journey in the Depression. 1924 is smack in the middle of the roaring 20s, which gels more with the inherent optimism of "Tomorrow". But I'm going to put this rabbit-hole down for reason of needing to do other things.

On drives to-and-from Eagle River, Chugiak, and Palmer a part of my brain has decided that it's time I learn all the words to "Dance Ten; Looks Three" from A Chorus Line to eventually probably perform at a burlesque show. It's a good time. And a compulsion!

Speaking of compulsions, there's this compulsion to fit as much outdoorsy nonsense into Alaska Summer weekends as possible. It's rainy and gross here, but it's supposed to shape up by the weekend so...camping? Last weekend was also rainy and gross, but that didn't stop us from hiking Thunderbird Falls again! 

Rose Bud Thorn

So there's this mental health (?) exercise I'd never heard of before today called "Rose, Bud, Thorn". The idea is that the thorn is something that fucks you up a little, the rose something positive, and the bud something that you're looking forward to. It's a nice exercise, and Ima stick it in my back pocket, for sure. But bestie, I had a hard time coming up with something for any of it.

The Children on my soon-to-be-caseload have talked about the Titanic at least three times these past two weeks. What does it portend? Watch out for icebergs! ...I guess!

It's S's 90 days celebration today, so we're going to go over after the meeting to do a firepit with friends. I will have to skate around 8:30 because I got shit to do tomorrow, etc. but I'm sure it will be nice.

My parents have started getting a little feistier than usual this week; I don't think my mom really wants to be in charge of pickup/dropoff for summer school. She was asking who does the cooking at my house recently. Idk, P. Nobody? She asked "Whatever happened to family dinner?" and that's a fair question (it was something I was complaining about at one point), but it just...doesn't matter right now.

If it's between making a family dinner generating extra dishes thus adding another coordination element, and everyone being fed as well as completing homework with L and my own homework...I just don't know. The choice seems obvious. Besides, if S is going to meetings at night it doesn't make all that much sense to coordinate a different dinner time for several different nights of the week. I don't know. I just don't want to, I guess? Maybe that's all that matters.

I got coffee with K this past weekend at the close-by coffee shop which was nice...except for that she seemingly summoned her estranged mother to the coffee shop by the mere mention of her in the coordination texts. Woof was that awkward. What is the playbook for that? I wish I'd kept my copy of Emily Post. I'm pretty sure she would know exactly what to do. And...what? Carry it around with me just in case? Why - yes! We retreated to her house to finish the visit. It was good to catch up and that's all I do, honestly. Just catch up. Like this:

Except - I never do. I really really want a tattoo of this someday.

Okay, time to document some more (it's the only way I generate hours, quite frankly) then to Raising Cane and a fire-pit.

May all your midsummers be bright!

It works until it doesn't. Then - whoa, Nellie!

L finally lost her first top front tooth at school on the last day of school. She also informed me that she must leave it in a glass of water and that when she woke up the tooth would be gone but the water would be colored to prove the tooth fairy had been there. This new mythos courtesy of a sleep story that was in rotation for a while. However, she ended up opting to put it under pillow instead which also me at that I ended up scrabbling around under her pillow trying to find it at way too early in the morning. And I think she saw me? But it also doesn’t seem like she’s super…connected to the tooth fairy, if that makes sense? She cares not for money or drama so I don’t know if she’s so much mourning the loss of this narrative as just bummed that she lost the tooth. And this last part I think because it happened on the last day of school and it’s starting to sink in that THIS was going to be IT.

The constant smell of cookouts in the air and the distant sound of reggae mean summer to me now. The Close Park is still being closely monitored by Youths to the best of my knowledge so we made the trek across the bridge half a mile away to go to one of the other three that are close to us. There are people playing tennis, a scant two spray paint tags, and other seven-year-olds so - the main complaints have come from children's parents by proxy and/or age-appropriate weapons and social concerns. What does that mean? A little girl she just met telling L, "My dad doesn't like it when you pull on my body." ...which is something L's older friend Li brought up at one point too. Specifically Li's dad. Specifically L pulling on Li. And another was a little boy playing with them aiming an orange nerf pistol at L while she was winding up to hit a birdie over a net. She asked him to stop, and while I'm not totally clear on if he did or not (and he probably wasn't clear on that either) she then brandished her racket at him, winding up with it held behind her back as if she was about to hit him. She didn't, but I get it. It was threatening. He said, "I'm going to tell your mom!" and started marching across the field to me. I started marching across the field to him and, calmly but with an edge, affirmed his concerns, let him know that it wasn't okay for her to do that and it's important for him to not aim guns at people. I was kind of on preschool teacher autopilot so hopefully it hit, but who knows? Then I did basically the same thing with her and she cried and the person she was playing badminton with sort of tried to defend it with, "Well, he was being mean to us the whole time." Uh...that's cap, probably? But even if so I tried to pivot it to to, "Well, ask an adult for help then." I don't know, bruh. Nobody's completely right, nobody's completely wrong, and if we pull gender into it I guess I feel kind of like extrapolating that AMABs maybe feel more comfortable asserting dominance in increasingly sophisticated ways ("Ima tell your mother!") while AFABs maybe feel more comfortable trying to solve the problem for themselves. But this is barely a case study. So maybe I'll stop going off about it.

I don't know really what I think about the pulling on other peoples' bodies thing yet. I gather that she's sensory seeking and low registration with sensory avoidance for specific sensations (sound, mostly), and pathological demand avoidance (PDA). Well, maybe just pathological with me, but still. I'd bet dollars to donuts that she masks like a motherfucker all day at school and then has to kind of let it all out at home which means nothing gets done. And wow! Much relatability! For me anyway. That's no way to live, however. There's the piece where I was like that as a kid too (I think?) but I had a sibling to work it out with who was also all those things x10 and in comparison I probably didn't seem all that sensory seeking, etc. Plus I had this temperament my genes plus being born in the 80s saddled me with. So. Yes. Note to self: hockey, rugby, social stories, heavy work, scaffold at home, and rehearse before going to playgrounds. I'll uh...talk about the parts of me that are super-duper worried about what other people think of her/me another time because that certainly is a factor and I am very ashamed of that part of myself but just ignoring doesn't do anybody any good. Least of all L. *ahem*

Hey! I'm on fieldwork, remember? The kid I was to plan an intervention for yesterday morning cancelled so now my main concern for this rotation has become GETTING ENOUGH HOURS. Ya girl will need to do a detailed research project or something for real!

Last week I got to shadow for an evaluation at a preschool and I had some Feelings about that. Some of the feelings were concern that we were not taking into account the classroom environment or schedule or, indeed, talking to teachers about The Things. But I can hope that the OT I was shadowing did that at a later time…right? I have some strong opinions about daycare settings and OT. Come at me if you dare!

Last week I also successfully wore makeup for five days in a row. I’ve always wanted to be the type of person who wears makeup for work and maybe THIS TIME I’ll get it together? I’ve been trying to pack it gym bags that I prepare by day and line up on hooks and everything!

But actually? Probably not, fam. 

I don't want to hear it, see it, or say it. Smelling is fine. So is tasting!

The day before yesterday was awash with sunshine for L's birthday party and it was just - fine! For the first time in the past 4-5 years her birthday party was absolutely just nice. S picked up the cake and a pinata because he was worried that the Squishmallow one I was working on wouldn't be done in time (...eh; it was and it wasn't. Pinatas exist to be smashed, I say. It's okay if they look a little...wack. Which this one did. But was giving Squishmallow! And that's all I ask for.) which I handled with no meltdowns and he explained himself just fine and all of that was - fine! Highly recommend renting out a municipal park for parties. 

The most awkward things that happened were a lady who sidled up the tables and started to unpack her Carr's bags and a couple of party-unaffiliated kids who wanted cupcakes. I told the lady that we'd probably be out by 1:00 but had the pavilion rented until 3:00. She reacted better than I would have expected if I'd stopped to think about it (which I didn't because Party Mode was activated) and set up on the...ground nearby? And started grilling on a tiny Coleman grill? And then just never shifted back over the the pavilion when we cleaned up? I feel kind of like a jerk (maybe I am!) but also maybe she was just waiting to see who would call her on moving in. Me, I guess. 

The kids - dude. We had 70 cupcakes or something so they were totally welcome to that but I have a thing where if you want a cupcake come ask me, but no you can't scamper off with two cupcakes because a) you are one hundred percent going to drop that shit somewhere in the park and just leave it on the ground and come back asking for more cupcakes (which, again, we have more than enough cupcakes but it's the future possible littering for me) and b) you gotta have your sibling who wants a cupcake come up and ask me because I need to know that they're verbal enough to do it so I don't have to mess with talking to your grownups about whether it's okay or not for them to have a cupcake and that's not even getting into the whole allergies piece. Like, I just...really, really want that to be your conversation with your grownups and not my conversation with your grownups, does that make sense? It's okay if it doesn't, just - look. It supports your development of autonomy and following multi-step directions, a'ight? Also, listen: just send your brother over. If he wants a cupcake he can come and get it, okay? End of.

All of that to say: yesterday was rainy and a little bit chilly so I am drank tea and had a mini Lilo and Stitch marathon with L while waiting for S to get back from a lunch with a former boss. We went on an almost-hike later in the afternoon, and Had Words about the bike ride L went on with my dad the day of her party. Suffice it to say that he's not a very...uh...active listener and is especially likely to tune me out and in this case he tuned me out when I said "It's not a good idea to go to the park right now." and offered two-to-three reasons why. S is quite upset with my dad now because of all the reasons I've outlined in previous entries while I am more in Not Happy But Not Surprised Territory because I've known my parents for a minute now, and, yup, that tracks. They pulled the booster seat from their car a year or two ago and I don't think that's a great idea. Do I push back, though? No, I don't. Maybe I should. Maybe that's the takeaway. Anyway S is cooling down currently and will probably Talk to My Dad about it at some point soon. S and I talked last night about how I think it's probably best to just reiterate his experiences with the youths (standing on corners, snappin' their fingers - haha no they're not) and making it much clearer than I (probably) did, and also words coming out of a man's mouth likely mean more to other men of A Certain Age than uh...mine. So.

I went to the gym to get my cardio for the week in. Research as early as the 90s shows that lifting weights supports increased bone density and that physical exercise might improve cognition overall as per biomarkers in cerebrospinal fluid (but not short-term memory; womp-womp). NEVERTHELESS. Off I went and finished up Etoile and Four Seasons. 

I've been plugging away at cleaning and organizing (thanks, bupropion!) whilst listening to podcasts. So far (week 1/12) this rotation has been such that I haven't needed to do a whole lot of work at home yet which is nice and has meant I get to chase the Spring Cleaning Dragon. Ergo: podcasts, not lectures or research articles on read-aloud. 

Media list incoming:

• Fancy as F*ck! A Sweet Cheeks podcast* (the one about listener questions)
• Criminal (the one about 50s gameshows which I'm a wh*re for 50s gameshows) 
• That's Spooky (I always seem to land on the weekly hangout ones)
• Shootin' the Shit (which is new to me but hasn't aired a new episode since February which oh mah gawd, did these Cape Breton drag queens actually have a falling out? But I'm loving it so far because I love me a drag queen and, I'm learning, I love a Southeast Canadian accent)

Oh! Guess what? For pride month they're screening Chasing Amy and To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar on the same night at the Bear Tooth. That might...uh...that might be a need to get a babysitter for moment. Or, you know, just go with a fran'. Or two? One for each movie?

Okay, that's it for now. Have a fair-to-excellent Memorial Day. And don't let anyone force you to memorialize things you don't want to! You're an adult, dammit (unless you're not, I guess), and you make the calls!

*Does it still count as para-social if I also know the people in real life? Sincere question. I'm leaning towards yes.

I see what you're doing there (...coding. It's coding.)

There are two white Scottish terriers outside the doors of this Starbucks. They're quiet and alert and staring at all the cars going by. I don't know if their owner is somewhere outside or what. Gotta love the twin energy, though! 

I've been sifting through past entries recently. I do this periodically, because I can't remember shit. Sometimes is not always, and now is not same as it ever was, but by golly it sure does feel like it. Incessantly. Hm. Okay. 

...and now I'm to the point in my parking lot document where I stuck Ne. Do I even want to do this? No? There won't be a better time later? Okay. So, something happened in college that just about wrecked me. A lot of things did, but I've been carrying this particular thing with me as a Big Bad Thing I did when I was...eighteen maybe? Or maybe 19. I was going to outline exactly what it was, but upon reflection maybe not. Suffice it to say, it was dumb, it was bad, it did hurt people, and it was like a plot point from teen melodramas of the day. And I felt horrible and evil. I also don't think I took full responsibility for it at the time, but I did blame myself and I did feel...horrible and evil. And it really wasn't until earlier this year (20-ish years later) that it at all occurred to me that maybe it wasn't 100% my fault. While it wasn't great to let Ne into my bedroom in the first place due to some nonsense shenanigans that he was always on about, it truly didn't occur to me that this would ensue in What Happened. So, late-teens Clara: it wasn't completely your fault. Yes, it was 50% your fault. And you should have Done More Shit to Stop It. But guess what? At no point anywhere in your life up to that point did you have any experience in setting healthy boundaries in any context. And you're still not great at it now, age 38. I'm not saying cut yourself some slack exactly, but I am saying that it makes sense why it happened. And it could have been predatory. It was more likely just dumb kid shit, but still. And if I saw it happen to/with one of my younger coworkers I wouldn't really think all that much less of them. I would just be like, hm. There were reasons and there's work to do. It would have served you (Clara) better to have gotten to work on reparations and boundary work than emotionally cutting and avoiding accountability.

"What's new, boo?" you might say (if you called me boo - which you don't; no-one does), and I might give you stock response about "Oh, I started fieldwork and that's going fine." "How do you like the setting?" you might pry further. "It's fine! I could see doing it." I'd mumble. And then you'd be a little frustrated because that's no way to have a conversation! And you'd be so right. I'm still settling in, I guess? And I'm not hyper-excited, except when I'm actually in sessions. I kind of just...want to do the thing? Not talk about how it is to be doing the thing with members of my family. Which likely means that's exactly what I need to do. But I'm not. (Yet.) But I will. But I'm not.

I have been foisted off on a therapist who has Her Own Stuff Going On this Wednesday, and that's fine! It's the reason why I'm writing a blog entry at 11:46 instead of driving about having conversations about OT theory. (Oh, yeah. MoPs and FoRs I should ask about those, but I never do.) I like it! I like the kids. I'm just a little antsy. Maybe I'm doing my IIB feels early. We got told in no uncertain terms that we'd probably have menty b's during IIB and clinical practice b's during the IIA. 

BUT ANYWAY. Let's talk about tarot. Not writ large, just in my little world. A card I pulled a few times when considering whether to just file for divorce already, how it would impact my kid, etc. was the 8 of Cups. It looks like the below:

This classically means moving on, leaving a situation behind, and fits pretty well with the "Dump him, girl!" narrative. Which I did do (sort of), and moved through to the current situation in which S is currently back in the family this, in large part, because he has gotten sober. One tableau I pulled cards for this question was The Moon, another card which escapes my memory and I'm not going to look it up right now because I have one more thing to do before the next two appointments, and the 8 of Cups. Someone on the reddit tarot channel commented that it looked like myself and my husband on either side with our child caught between us. Well, the reason I bring it up is because I pulled the 8 of cups on Saturday and on that day I went to an AA meeting with S. We were leaving the meeting and I realized that perhaps the meaning of this card in my situation is leaving a very literal representation of...cups of alcohol. Leaving alcohol behind. 

Speaking of woo, it was only recently that I discovered that even though my sun sign is in Virgo, my moon is in Gemini, and my Venus is in Libra (my mars is in Capricorn, but nobody seems to care about that in the astrology world). This is all hokum, probably, but one alleged thing about people with their moon in Gemini is that they can see lots of different sides of lots of different issues and other people don't tend to like this very much. Which: can confirm is true for me, personally.

How are the parks in your city? The ones in Anchorage are mostly fine except for the one nearest my house. I think I've written about this before, but it has become overrun with middle schoolers/young teens. On the one hand this is fine and on the other hand they have begun swearing extremely loudly at each other like they're auditioning for a walk-on role in a Kevin Smith film, and monopolizing the playground equipment and when asked to stop becoming increasingly threatening. S posted on the Nextdoor app calling for solidarity and when a local mom with three children tried to follow through by asking them to stop three of them threatened her and started following her down the path leading from the park to the neighborhood. She felt unsafe enough that she called the police. Who came...but refused to involve their parents. She took a picture of them which she sent to S when he asked. On that same day we'd tried to go to the park and made it a grand total of 5 minutes before two of the three hunkered down on the swings by L and started discussing dildos in a loud (uninformed) way. We just left. My instinct is to be like, "Time and place - this isn't it. And you sound ridiculous! Castle is halfway across town. And you'd definitely need a lubricant. Amateurs." ...and is that helpful? Probably - no. And then S tried to go talk to them on his own (because sometimes youths react better if they hear it from a man; misogyny! Alive and well!) and that went actually much worse and now we're at a total loss. By which I mean I'm probably going to go the witchcraft route. My only other thought is to call the police every time and hope that it's so often that they get sick of it and follow through. However, my experience at a high-incidence Siren is such that I think they'll probably just stop sending officers and say things like, "You've reached your yearly limit on police calls." Which...that can't be a real thing, can it? The operators are just making shit up, right? Lordt.

Today is the last day of school in the Anchorage School District. And wow will I ever not miss the power struggles that go with dropping L off in the morning at Current Optional School! Phew. I'm excited for exciting, new power struggles!

Unrelated: I think I'm getting the nausea side-effect from Wellbutrin (cry-laughing emoji). Oh well. Gotta be something, right? 

What good are you? Sincere, non-sarcastic question.

Why has there been no new data collected on racial and socioeconomic disparities in the occurrence of cerebral palsy since 2011? Get on that, someone. At first I thought it was just because: The Census, but unless we just assume things are wack because of COVID (not a bad assumption), that implies there would be data for 2021. Unless that doesn't release until a certain number of years? Like public records? The only reason I know that is because my mom is super-into genealogy and has been since my childhood. I swear!

...and a belated: thank goodness, Canada. Thank. Goodness. There's still potential for the new PM to be a super-villain but he seems less super-villainous (villainy?) than the alternative. Heh. Sort of related is that fewer and fewer people seem to be saying the Pledge to Allegiance at the start of school lately. Hmmmmm. Sometimes concerns are founded, aren't they?

My favorite (internal) swear has been and continues to be "Christ alive!" I like that it's an injunction, an exclamation, and sort of blasphemous all at once. "Zounds!" would be another good one, if I ever remembered to use it. Etymology, although I kind of think you already know. Also, "Strewth!" which is giving not only Shakespeare, but also Oz. I watched part of the short documentary on the time during COVID in which quarantined Shakespearean actors coordinated a full-length production of Hamlet in Grand Theft Auto. It was amazing how...calming Shakespeare is? So does creep this petty pace from day to day, fuck yeah. Plus there's this slight connection between Hamlet specifically and Star Trek: TOS which I like to think about sometimes, which makes it double-soothing. The only leadership training i ever want to take again is one where you have to simulate being an officer on the starship Enterprise, because that's where the rubber really meets the road, homie.

I do often feel kind of...burnt out on Anchorage? But I do truly love coming home. And there are little glimmers that remind me of why I fell in love with Alaska in the first place. And it's not just the mountain vistas, heart-stopping beauty, and lack of 90+ degree Fahrenheit weather. I was minding my own business in the locker room when someone complimented my Totoro shirt. This turned into a brief conversation about the virtues of different Studio Ghibli films and how our parents didn't understand why we'd ever let our children watching Something Like That. Also that The Boy and the Heron soundtrack is lit. That's My Alaska! ...it's the little things.

More Alaska is a Small Town:

• A parent at Optional School spotting the name on L's jacket and identifying it as belonging to the person we got it from as a hand-me-down. Then contacting the person, realizing it belonged to L, and both of us getting excited that we know the same awesome person.
• Identifying a potential site for my capstone next Spring and only knowing about it because I'm Facebook friends with someone who underwent a radical life change, but who I know from teaching them adult dance classes, and going to a murder mystery party 🤷
• Running into someone else in the locker room (twice!) who used to be one of my (adult, early childhood program) students when I worked at the preschool. She's an interesting person, and remembered me but not my name. She said she had some pictures from that time and attempted to email them but didn't attach them to the email, which is kind of in-line with how it was having her as a student. And is kind of in line with what it's like having me as a student! It just be like that sometimes.

I took my parents to see Dial M for Murder (the stage play) at Cyrano's for Mother's Day. I kind of thought it would just be me and my mom but my dad invited himself along, so it was the three of us. The program said it was "updated for modern audiences" and whenever I see that I automatically assume that means lesbians. Guess what? It did! Which is great and it was cast well and I loved it, and it was a little awkward seeing it with my parents. But probably also good for them. But yes. The production was great. The acting was very good, accents were curated with an accent coach and it showed, and the set and wardrobe was amazing. Highly recommend if you're suddenly into live theater - which, apparently, I am.

Volunteering at the Parkinson's boxing class has been interesting if not probably exactly the right fit. The classes themselves are fun (I've never tried boxing before and I'm crap at it!), the people are nice, and it's interesting to see the application of exercise and cognition together. This involves things like conversation-starters and Space-Invader mechanism games on recumbent bikes (did you know how fucking hard those games are? Very.). Some snippets so far:

• Do you play any video games at home? "No, those are for kids." Okay, what games do your kids play. "It's the grandkids. They play, like, War of the Worlds." World of Warcraft? "Yes. No." Do you play any board games? "No." What do you like to do at home. "I watch movies." Oh! What movies do you watch? "...." Which I'm afraid I assume to mean that he means Fox News, not movies. Please prove me wrong, guy. Plus, life's a game. And a show. And, occasionally, a gameshow. Get into it!
•  One conversation starter was "What's the best food in the world?" which most of the other participants interpreted as types of cuisine and I interpreted as A Food. So I said, "Malasadas." because I have those on the brain lately. One of the ladies in the group got excited and asked me, "Are you Portuguese? I am!" Unfortunately, no. But I also didn't realize that malasadas are historically Portuguese. Learning!
• There was also the little old lady who angrily stomped around the workout session with her cane, and when I spoke with her said she was 82 and hated working out. She gestured at her husband and said, "He's 94. He drives me around all day and makes me do things! I hate it!" But she did seem a little perkier after her workout, and I would be a little salty too if I were 82 with several painful surgeries under my belt. Scar tissue ain't no joke, yo.

I've been thinking about this song lately. I listened to this entire album a lot in 2012-2013. All the songs are kind of downers but...in a legitimate way. Relatable to me, anyway. My favorite line is:
    "There's big ceremonies, things that go fast

      You're cheer is such a treasure

      Your tears are like the weather

      They're never meant to last."

I love that L, at age 6 nearly 7 still loves worms. I was digging in the garden yesterday and found a bunch which she scooped up and ran to re-home in her Barbie dream house. Which is outside because she painted it black last year and I am That Mom in the sense that, what is it harming? It's not going to be mint condition forever that's not my vibe. Don't worry, I had her put the worms back in dirt before she checked out for the evening. They're fine!

Okay. That clears out my parking lot document for now. I feel like I must do a few more things before schlepping back to downtown to volunteer at Field Day, so - abrupt goodbye!

Can I just like...live at the library?

This might be a long one. I have a lot to do in a paper-worky way and I want to alternate all the Things with journaling in case I don't have time starting next week. Which...I probably won't. This time off has been nice.

Friends have kind of been on my mind lately. How to make them, keep them. Why am I not good at that, etc. And I got referred for neuropsych testing (finally! After all these years!) so maybe that will shed some more light on What My Various Deals Are. But...yeah. Every time I think about reaching out to the friends I have in the area I'm met with this sense of myself being not-enough, or there not being enough time, or as, The Linda Lindas say in one of their songs, "Making plans feels like a living hell". But why, tho'? There's a part of my brain that says, "Water the grass that you want to grow", which is generally good advice.

However, if I look at the timeline, my now-friendships look like sending Instagram posts to each other, texting but then not texting back or making plans because I think I'm just being used to get to an estranged daughter rather then being an actual...friend. Getting together for dinners every so often (which is nice!) ...but not feeling like I can reciprocate because of the truly staggering amounts of alone time I need to feel okay-ish, the social pull of my daughter's gregariousness, and the emotional labor of my parents and in-laws as well as the sticky nature of my relationship in which have couple friends has been a little complex. And now it's more complex still with the Ways he (S) feels about Men. Which...does that make sense? There's a lot of shame. A lot of complexity. A lot of fatigue. A lot of splinters of identity, so I don't know where to start or end, what to disclose, what to relate to. And humans have to have roles to play, I think. Groups have very specific dynamics. And my cursed need for harmony wants to douse it in gasoline and light in on fire at the slightest hint of conflict or disingenuousness. 

If I pull it back further I had to make myself little rotating schedules of time to spend with friends. I had a system and that's how I hung out with people. Very seldom have I had a "drop by anytime" type relationship with anyone. Too much shame, I guess? Being unsure of social convention? This was compounded by some things that happened with K soon after I moved up here. And then there's the notion of parallel play being the way in which I'm most comfortable making friends and hanging out with people (for the most part). We need to be working, dancing, or hiking - just doing something to make it work.

Back further (to Arizona), I think it felt a little better being unstructured, but there was still an element of doing with not being with. Pulling it back even further to college, I don't know how many people I was actually friends with in college. M, for sure. J for sure. My roommate? B? Almost none of the people I danced with (save M). I just...couldn't feel connected, I guess. I don't know that I really made friends at work, either. But I'm Facebook friends with a lot of people? I was allowed to be places and with people, but I was always hard to get to know. I recall even having a conversation with my first boyfriend about how I don't think there's very much to know. Like...what do you mean you want to get to know me? I can't sum it up for you neatly. Eventually I got a narrative going because it became clear that this question of "WHO ARE YOU"? was a recurring expectation. But, how true was it? It wasn't untrue, but it wasn't accurate, if that makes sense. We cannot really know each other. We are each unknowable. That is the nature of existence and perception. And that's pretty obvious. And kind of spectrum-y/BPD, no?

What was I...oh - right. I remember attachment to friends being easier in childhood. I also remember pretty clearly (I think? Caveat here that memory is trash, forgetting is part of memory. This is all conjecture, in a way, as all memories are.) times when I would attach to people who didn't like each other and that being profoundly painful to me. I would try to push them together and they wouldn't like it and I would feel kind of affronted that they didn't like each other. How very dare you not see the value in each other! I also remember trying to mediate between two girls I'd just met at a church I went to once and never went to again because I just couldn't handle disharmony and had this perception that it was my job to solve the problem. Eventually I came to a place where I felt physically hurt, kind of, when people didn't like me. And honestly, what do you say to a kid when that happens? Sure, maybe they're jealous. Sure, maybe they're missing out. But honestly - when it's happening to you - maybe you feel like, oh. They see me for I really am. And they hate it. And I'm just...sad about that. And I kind of didn't then believe in the impossibility of getting along with everyone. Even though it's just that - an impossibility. 

Oh and those two girls? Were kind of making fun of me for trying to help them. Suck a d*ck, Paris, TX. 

All that to say this is a little on the nose, but I'm here for it.

Working Title

Holiday Things
Mother's day is over the verdict being that it was...mid! Not bad, not good, just mid. It was nice going to the Unitarian Church on Mother's Day. There was a sermon by a woman who was frank about her relationship with her children (estranged oldest; two younger children she's still on good terms with) and passed the mic around the congregation to share about their relationships with their mothers. But I especially loved it because she talked about motherhood as potentially being an iteration of the maiden/mother/crone cycle of Paganism. I cry at the drop of a hat these days, so speaking on-mic wasn't really for me but S shared a bit. AA has been a good journey for him so far.

Body Things
I'm a little irritated and worried about my left humeral head. I did something (probably during the somatic dance class I've been to twice in the past two weeks - or during one of the yoga classes I've been to in the past two weeks) and now it's sitting a little bit at an anterior tilt. And I have some nerve sensation. Not pain but like...a feeling of "uh-oh; watch it!" plus more limited sensation in my left hand and arm and they're maybe cooler to the touch than they used to be? Unless they weren't? See, this is why I need to distract the Border Collie Within with Activities. I suspect my internal rotators are tight and my left rotator cuff guys need some strengthening. Plus maybe some different k-taping. I did a bit of k-taping last night but I feel like it was the wrong move and maybe I should add some scapular taping to keep those guys in line. Specifically, this (the one on the left):

Norepinephrine/dopamine-wise I have a followup with my Psych NP today and I have some stage fright about that. Will I remember about all the things she asks me? Girl, don't have stage fright. Just do the best you can (and work out twice a day; maybe not that last one). 

Parenting Things

I feel like such a shit parent what with the drama of "helping my kid with school". Like...I do get why it's hard. And how it's hard. And just...fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. I'm not doing the best job. I don't want my kid to be sad because I'm frustrated. I feel like I'm failing. I didn't think I would be like this. I really didn't. I didn't account for the complex trauma of relationship with my partner, my parents, my in-laws, and inner child. And I want to be able to help her. And on some level I just...look. I was hyperverbal and on the verge of hyperlexic. So in that sense I do not know why the fuck anyone wouldn't want to learn how to read. Which isn't great. It's like how they make people who have really good grades in something tutors to people who have trouble understanding a concept and the tutors have a hard time bridging the gap with the people they're tutoring because they don't know how to get to where they are from where the other person is. For a variety of reasons, but you see what I'm saying, right?

But anyway (and because I Got a Time Limit, Guv'nor), L got into a K-12 Optional school that she'd been on the waitlist for since kindergarten. Remember how I was agonizing between Optional School and Chinese Immersion for kindergarten? Well, I spent last weekend agonizing between K-12 Optional School and Current Optional School and I think we're going to do the K-12. There will be downsides for sure, but...nothing that seems all that different from what we're doing now? And honestly the parental involvement in teaching my child in the morning has not been great for our relationship. K-12 has an actual SpED classroom (+) which implies to me that perhaps there will be accommodations made instead of honking on at length about how learning is personalized when, really, it isn't and, really, no modifications are made to the classroom to manage behaviors at all that I can see. (I mean like lighting, followthrough on protocols, any sensory modification whatsoever, etc.) ...or, you know, maybe not. And I'm honestly going to miss Current Optional School. It was warm and as a parent I was starting to visualize what it would be like when she got to do a play with her 5/6 grade class or do the cardboard regatta or go through the bubble arch, etc. And I will miss the Stardew Valley-esque festivals. 

And while I'll admit I never felt all that welcome there, I can also admit that this is more of a testament to my own personal nonsense than anything else. 

I hope your personal nonsense is going well...and your personal sense too! 

I have faith too, but we need to be realistic here

I'm going to go help out at a boxing class for individuals with Parkinson's disease today and catching up on lectures; otherwise I don't feel very...real, I guess? Two emails, unanswered. One text, unanswered. An order for a drink in a for-here cup was filled in a to-go cup. And all of that feels...normal. Okay. Regular.

Because I'm at a near-standstill with things like trainings and assignments, I think it's time to talk about some things I've been mulling over:

1) I am angry about being perceived as having had an emotional affair. ...but according to numerous Youtube videos I did! And, there are confounding factors. What are these confounding factors, you might ask (you might not. But you might!)? 

    a. The persistent limerence that goes along with ADHD, Autism, and BPD. Almost no matter which
    one or combination of these conditions that I have, this is going to be a factor. 
    b. Look, my husband was not in a good place - with me. Towards me. Around me. As a person. And it's     all very well to say, "You should be going to only your spouse with your hopes and dreams and feelings     and and and...". But what if they're not a safe space, guys? What then?
    c. [EDIT: added 5/15/25] Also, the person in question was a friend beforehand. A friend from before? A      close friend, and I was friends with them during numerous relationships and at no point was it a                  problem in any of those. I do get that it's a problem for my husband for various reasons that are                personal to him, and those are reasons that we can't seem to move beyond because there is simply a            point at which I am burnt out on it and tired of having conversations (arguing) about it, because para         me I did not do anything wrong except for not telling him about taking up the friendship again. He            has narratives about most if not all of the women in his life in which they cheat on him, try to control         him, are dismissive, are abusive and while I'm sure the formative events were accurate I think they            shaped the rest of his perceptions in a way that it's difficult for any women in his life to be Enough            and it's hyper-difficult for his wives to Be Their Own People without this being threatening in some            way. So it's easier to be all like, "You are an adulterer." rather than "This is complex situation and                people of diverse genders can be friends with one another, but I am having a big reaction to this                particular situation I need you to put it down for now while I process." So, in conclusion, about this            situation I am two things simultaneously: burnt out and sympathetic. But not at the expense of my            own, deeply-held beliefs. Which are that I am "allowed" to be friends with whoever I want; if it's                threatening to a relationship that is because of foundational insecurity not because one or both of the         partners are exercising free will in this way. Okay. Edit concluded.

And (this is not a confounding factor, just facts no printer) I bristle at the idea that one person is supposed to satisfy all the needs. I double bristle at the idea that friendships should not be intimate. Some aren't, this is true. But for all of them to be the same level? That's a trash perspective. Am I defensive about it? Yes, yes I am.  But sometimes I am defensive because I am tired of feeling attacked and tired of having the same, nonproductive, conversations over and over again.

2) Here's another one (the following stuff happened recently - after I wrote most of the above, as a matter of fact! Saturday, May 3, 2025 starting at 7:00 AM if we're being specific) - no matter what I do in this situation I am, in fact, fucked. S got up before I did on Saturday and said he would take L out to breakfast to let me sleep some more. Which is very nice! But, of course, with noise and activity going on in and around the room I started to wake up anyway. So I start looking at my phone off-and-on. Just looking at notifications (none of which were from real people, btw) and I thought of something I wanted to google. Does it hurt when you ovulate? The answer is: "It depends"! But yes, probably. S enters the room and I shut my phone off and put it down next to me because, to my mind, I'm supposed to be sleeping, not googling about my ovaries. He perceives this as being "sneaky" and demands to look at my phone. He goes through my texts and finds a text thread that's been going with one of L's school friend's parents. The problems with this thread were that there were "too many texts" even though each and every one was strictly parent-parent-coordination stuff and that the parent was male. And I was texting him while S was out of town (???? because this is...when the coordination stuff just happened to fall?) and the texts stopped on April 27th (which is when S came back into town, I guess? This is something I'd have to look up, though, because I am a goldfish about time). I instantly got extremely angry because: what the fuck. The whole thing is giving exactly the controlling and gatekeeping I grew up with and experienced in college. In some ways, potentially, worse, because when I presented the situation to my parents even my dad was like, "He needs to give you more grace." Which, even considering the paternalistic nature of this comment, seems to mean he's not on S's side in this. We eventually got to a better place in all of this, but I still feel like this is something I one hundred percent anticipated. Which sucks. Sucks being right.

...and I'm still kind of angry. I get why this is an issue for him. And he explained it again (his mother, his past relationships, his last wife - although I don't exactly trust his perception of this particular piece given our history together?). And he hasn't worked on this shit up to the last two months in the entire ten years we've been together. I can understand why he has issues with jealousy, and this isn't a way in which I think I've failed him. In none of my previous relationships has having a friendship with men been an issue. Just this one! And as per our previous conversations I was not (in the situation with the classmate's parent) "trying to make male friends". I was just trying to coordinate fucking playdates and help out with Mini-Courses for L's school. Where we landed was just...the same conversation. Again.

I didn't really respond to his texts the way I wanted to. I used an AI tool to respond to his text because I can't...even. It doesn't seem as though I'm being heard. So why continue to try? Or, if I am, he's just sinking so much time and repetition into changing my mind. Specifically, he wants me to feel/believe I've done something wrong. And while I am open to the idea that I need to take responsibility for the things I've done wrong...these just aren't among those things. 

*sigh* Cooking class tonight. Hopefully that'll be fun!

In other news, malasadas are lit! You should try them sometime.

I think I was hoping to have something more substantial to say today, but I am tired of the inside of my head. More trainings, more neuro-occupation lecture catchup, more Audre Lorde.

"If I didn’t define myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive." - Audre Lorde

An amuse-bouche if anything

This week has been all about just...being, and doing the next right thing. Aren't they all, though? Probably.

I got TB test which, according to my PA should be a blood test because "nobody does the skin test anymore!" The hell they don't, but: okay. Four vials of blood later I whipped the little gauze guy (you know that guy!) out before the phlebotomist could put the band-aid on. 45 minutes later and wow should I have ever left that gauze in there because I. Am. A. Bleeder! And I also don't have either wet wipes or a first-aid kit in the car even though I could have sworn I did. Put it on the list! In the meantime? Bleed.

Amongst all the (actually!) productive and fun stuff I've been doing this week I'm also waiting on the green light to call or be called by a potential mentor at an inpatient psychiatric hospital. Otherwise it's all been playing Spiritfarer. "A cozy management game about dying"! Actually so cozy. Actually so management. Actually only one death so far. Also, it's set in the afterlife, so technically...are the spirits dying...more?

Today:

• It's ride your bike to school day - which we can't do for logistical reasons. So instead I packed the bike in the back of the ol' Jeep Patriot and called it good. Except! I forgot my wallet. 
• Back home to get the wallet while logging onto something called Fourwave to look at all the Capstone projects there be for this year's crop of graduating OTs. It was nice to see everybody's trajectories, but there were only 2-3 projects that were even tangentially-related to what I want to do. So. Um. I don't know what to make of that? Is this going to be another undergrad-type-deal in which the thing I'm doing is too out there and my mentors are going to be like, "I don't know, girl." We'll see. I think part of it for me is that I know damn well that once I get an OT job I will be Doing That and won't have time or mental energy for shenanigans. So let's shenanigans it up for capstone, baybee!
• While watching the above and hopping in every once in a while to say, "Good job!" and "Say more about NICU protocols for neonates born addicted to opioids..." I just did chores. Sidenote: that one hack where you play Stardew Valley music while doing chores is very on-point. Good job whoever came up with that. Try it today!
  
• Then: the Costco (they had chocolate-covered gummy bears today!) while listening to "Go Touch Grass"
• Tha' gym while watching Etoile (I'll watch Charlotte Gainsbourg in anything except Antichrist). And it's about 50% in French with a dry blink-and-you'll-miss-it kind of humor and Real Ballet Excerpts. It's just - I can't gush enough, really. I ran into a real-live ballerina at the gym too (N; she used to be artistic director for the dance theatre in town) which I appreciated. Way to be thematically cohesive, life!
• Then the bloodletting as outline above and now I'm sitting in the parking lot waiting to collect L.

We're supposed to go the museum this afternoon which should be lovely as long as nobody has a meltdown. 50/50 chance it's me.

Maybe something more substantial tomorrow?

Gedenkrad

I guess I have Canadian YA literature on the brain, because the phrase "She was more of a knitter than a doer" has been living rent-free in my head lately. I remember reading it in one of the Anne books (the one where she went to college, I think?) and wondering what tf it meant. I had a vision of one of the middle-aged ladies they (Anne and her roommates) lived with curled up next to the fire knitting. Evidently it means you're all plans no action. Now imagine someone from The Maritimes saying "She was more of a knitter than a doer." Thank you for coming on this full-circle journey with me.

I tried searching these entries to see if I've already talked about this, and it doesn't look like it. Sorry if this is repetitious, but if so, here we go again: when I was moving out of The Fairy House O, understandably, needed to find someone to take my place. That rent don't pay itself, k'nawmean? So O did find someone - Bri. They were quiet and nice, worked some number of weeks on and some number of weeks off on the slope and came to tour the room while I was in the midst of packing up to move out. I moved out and to a beautiful place in Government Hill with my on-again-off-again roommate, A and didn't really think about Bri again, honestly. You may have noticed that I'm using Bri's given name instead of a first-initial. Why? Hang tight. A year and some change later things had gotten serious enough with S that we decided to move in together and found an apartment in a part of Anchorage called Valley of the Moon. It was close to the place that S's best friend was planning on living and a truly beautiful part of the city (well, except for the hypodermic needles). We moved in in August and so I decided to throw a small birthday party in the new apartment - on this particular year on my actual birthday. I was turning thirty and did it up pretty big (well, for me). I heard a couple of gunshots in the distance in the night, but that's truly nothing too out of the ordinary for Anchorage. It turned out the very same night in a park about four blocks away from my apartment, Bri was shot while biking through Valley of the Moon park. There was a somewhat high-profile serial killer in Anchorage that summer and they chose Bri. There was a ghost bike in the park for a while thereafter; I'm not sure if it's still there. Following Bri's death, O had something of a breakdown. He moved to Chicago - which is not in and of itself a red flag, but when I got together with him for dinner he was wan and sad and said, "It turned out that nobody really knew Bri." Maybe they had a hard time connecting with others. Maybe they were on the spectrum. Maybe there was a swimming pool of human experience between them and others. And then they were gone. I wonder how many lives are like that.

There's a blog I've read for over 20 years in which the blogger at one point wrote about some days when they wake up and saw every person in a "Russian mystic" fashion*. Every person was once a baby who was loved by their parents. Everyone. I suppose that's not technically true. But...life is so strange. How can we ever really know each other? We cannot Vulcan mind meld. And even if we could, I suppose that might be considered emotional abuse.

I think I've mentioned my appointments about meds in passing. My NP was surprisingly receptive to my descriptions of why escitalopram wasn't working for me. I was expecting to fight a little more for my right to...uh...try a different med. She referred me to a psychiatric NP and long story short despite some weird miscommunication about washout periods (I shouldn't have to ask about that, right? This is covered in PA programs, no?), and long story short I'm on day 7 of bupropion and that seems to be going much better. I feel like I need to distribute a questionnaire to my daughter because I'm not so sure my husband perceives me accurately all the time. Which, to be fair, who does? What a lot to ask! Etc. But I think L might be able to tell me the things that are the most raw and important.

Likert-scale-like does mommy:
Forget things
Remind you of the character Anxiety from Inside Out 2; how often?
"Yell" at you?
Listen to you?
Play with you?
Take care of you?

...and then, of course, I would have to get S's opinion on certain things b/c what 6-year-old gives a fuck about safety and self-care? Not that many. Anyway. Of the two meds I've tried so far this one seems to much better support function if not sleep. I am still sleeping an adequate amount, but the first couple of night I would have a thought while drifting off to sleep that triggered a dump of dopamine or norepinephrine and that woke me up a bit until I calmed myself down again. But this seems to be resolving and I tend to manage my sleep through magnesium and melatonin anyway.

Hey, guess what? No, not that! I got a haunted mirror! Well, I thought it might be haunted-ish when I dropped it in the parking lot document. Since then it's behaved itself, but after a playdate with her 10-year-old friend, L said she was scared of the mirror and thought it was saying, "Run!" to her. I said we'd keep an eye on that and cleaned it off with Windex. So far so good since then. But! It was returned to the thrift shop from whence I got it as per sequencing of dates on stickers. Hopefully if haunted, it's benign? I'll let you know. I have sage! So much sage. We'll be fine!

There are fun facts I just can't seem to forget. And here are two: Nastya of Youtube empire fame (or maybe not, I don't know how your family manages its screen time; if you don't know who she is I'm happy for you) was mistakenly diagnosed with cerebral palsy when she was <2 years old. W.C. Fields seemed to have a type of dermatillomania as related in one of his biographies. One of the people interview for the book said he would obsessively pick his face. I'm sure that's useful information to someone. Don't know who though.

The Ataris came to Anchorage and I didn't go because I went to that burlesque show with most of my cohort. I guess I could have gone afterwards, but I just...can't make myself do things past 10:00 PM. Or maybe I can now with the new meds? Uncertain. And the lead singer from Illuminati Hotties came to Anchorage too for Parlour In the Round. I did consider going to that, but things got complicated that day, S was out of town, L and I got separated on the way home from the park and she scared the hell out of me and I scared the hell out of her and we cried and decided to stay the hell home that night. But maybe next time! *sigh*

I finished Dordogne and as a result now really want to go to there. It's not super likely I'll be able to, but if you do, here's a handy-dandy guide. 

*She also has an entry I think about every once in awhile about days where "someone left the cap off the sexy" and everyone is weirdly sexy on days like that. I have days like that too, but it seems less societally allowed the longer I'm alive.

Fuck It, I'm Journaling Until 1:30 PM

I used to dream only about one or two people, the rest of my dreams being populated by strangers. But lately I've been seeing more and more familiar faces. I've made little notes the morning after each person appears, but it's really too much to keep up with. Past workplaces - like the preschool and the siren.  There are dreams about N (he was a really supportive, good friend who moved to Washington, like we all hope to do someday). Dreams about returning to preschool (I was the younger toddler room teacher's TA in one and helping a new preschool teacher set up their classroom in my old one in another). Dreams about working at the siren and struggling to keep up during peak (classic stress dream! Good job, subconscious.) Seeing J again and getting a glimpse of his life now. Mundane and lovely. Walks and chores, love for his partner and life. The little things making it worthwhile. Even sexy-time dreams about F and J2! (Those somehow turned into getting stressed about living in/moving into/out of some sort of dilapidated apartment that was definitely giving early 90s Seattle.)

I finally finished North of North which was heckin' cute but could had more potential than it realized, I think. But it was good to watch at the gym since I'm dipping in and out of Love On the Spectrum. Some of my (Facebook) friends have said they believe it to be infantilizing and I suppose they're right. But they have had some Level I peeps on the show and higher-masking individuals, but tend a little bit more towards lower-masking individuals for repeat guests. Like James! James, in my quite unprofessional opinion, is somewhat low-masking. He is also how I feel on the inside quite a lot! James is an icon. Just: trust. I am internally groaning and muttering to myself about something or other in a crotchety way all the damn time I promise. I think I've mentioned it before (my quick search says no), but my Myspace handle used to be fatboyinnatightspace. I stole it one day when I was trying to get by a few people in the back room at the fourth Starbucks I worked at when my manager said, "Whoa. Fat boy in a tight space here!" And I realized that I, too, felt like a fat boy in a tight space. And you know what? Sometimes I still do. 

Sometimes I don't really want cisgender femininity. And not just because I perform it badly! Also because it's damaging and a waste of time in some ways. Depending on your culture, if you're a man, you're probably not bombarded with societal messages about your habitus and elective cosmetic stuff you need to do. Actually, you know what? I'm wrong. Male eating disorders are chronically underrepresented and just as damaging as any other gender's eating disorders. Don't mind me, I am no old.

Persuasion (persuasiveness? Debate team) is the devil.

Okay, bye.

The Middle Way

 I have a lil' parking lot document with topics I want to yap about on the internet, but for today...I want to talk about yesterday. Because it was a beautiful cross-section of My Deal Which I Fucking Hate as it relates to social stuff. And I'm having a bunch of feelings about it and I want to write it out and hopefully that'll help, yeah? Yeah!

Let's go. Oh - background information: today is my third day to be on Bupropion. So far so pretty good and I'm down to 2-3 cups of coffee a day with that in my system which is wild because that's down from...like...five.

The tarot card I pulled yesterday was Justice. So I was trying to keep that in mind yesterday. But I didn't dig deep into what Justice means and I want to do that a little bit this morning too.

I dropped L off at school yesterday but it was volunteer appreciation day so the kids were all just running riot on the playground - bit of a drop-and-go moment. I didn't go to the volunteer appreciation breakfast because...I thought it would be too much for me. I have issues with social anxiety? With groups that are kind of like parties? With settings that have non-specified roles? Where I don't have A Person I feel solid about? As I said, the Bupropion is working pretty well, so I went about the rest of my errands for the day. I picked up fairy lights from Target for an event tonight, got gas from Costco, decided to pick up my final tips from The Siren and that I wanted to pick up some malasadas to take to the kids there because damn. Things been rough lately. I got a box for an event I was volunteering at later that morning too.* So I...did all that! Tips: check. Brown sugar cortado: check. I was running early so I went to campus a little early because: why not?

I hung out in the back for admitted students day and listened in a little before a panel at 10:45. I don't know if I did a good job with it. But there were three other students there and I think among us we had some good (if somewhat intense) feedback about the program. After that I took a sandwich and left to run two more errands before heading home. 

S is back-back (and things have overall been going well; I am still not a hundred percent, but sobriety has been helping and he's still going to therapy consistently and has pivoted to things like going swimming with us when we go swimming, helping with pickups and drop-offs and taking the lead on enforcing boundaries around screen-time), so he picked L up from school for Early Release and then to his parents house so she could sleep over.

Last night was a Big Event for school that I did almost nothing to help coordinate or execute. So my plan, inasmuch as I had one, was to help strike. I probably should have helped setup, but I didn't. I thought my errands would take much longer than they did or that I should spend time with my daughter before spending 4+ hours away from her at night, but in retrospect it would have been fine. 

So basically all I did before the event was listen to some lectures, fold some laundry, and get ready. I thought I would take a nap too but that just...didn't pan out. So I do the makeup and get dressed. We go by my in-laws' house to see L before because I miss her and want to see her. That's all fine, but then there's some mild anxiety around parking and where to direct my parents to park for the event. 

We're hella early. We're the first ones there. The waitstaff is pretty jazzed about that because apparently they thought the event was supposed to start at 5:00 and so had been there since 4:00. Ope.

From there on out...the vibes were just...off. I wasn't greeted by...almost anybody? I went up to someone a couple of times and smiled, asked for a task, executed the task, and went back to my table, but overall it just felt weird. Like I was being depersonalized. Despite being at an almost-empty table no-one in my cohort came to sit with me. No teachers came to speak with me. I didn't get up and go talk to them either? Some OT3s came to sit with us and it was nice to talk with them and catch up a little bit, but overall the weird vibes just compounded over the course of the evening and by 9:15 I was ready to go. I had an upset stomach, I didn't feel very festive, I wasn't masking very well all day anyway and I sure as hell couldn't mask anymore by the end of the experience.**

There was a tremendous amount of sadness. Of feeling not good enough. Of feeling like I just don't connect with people very often in a deep friendship way and that makes me feel like there's something wrong with me. Feeling like the hope I felt when I first entered the program was misplaced - like I was not, in fact, seen and understood and scaffolded and watered and turned towards the sun. Like this is my fault because I didn't do enough. Because I wasn't enough. Many of the same feelings I felt at Belhaven. They didn't know what to do with me. And here...I don't exactly know what the problem is. Except - me. 

To be clear: I am going to be an alright-to-good OT. Maybe even a great one, eventually, if I find the right fit for my skills and temperament. One event doesn't define me. But it does make me sad. Because maybe this is forever. Maybe it just be like that most of the time. Maybe it's just the 'tism (which I will now a hundred percent not pursue a diagnosis for due to all the talk of a registry). Maybe I'm just not a good friend/classmate/family member. Maybe I'm not only not for everyone - but not for most people. And I kind of have to be okay with that. 

At the end of the night I had an upset stomach and had to run to the bathroom. This gave me an out when they asked if I was going out afterwards. 

It did make me miss the burlesque company, oddly. Those unicorns of humans have lists and tasks and schedules and it's so much nicer in many ways to be bullshitting with the ND while un-crumpling ones than wondering what's expected of you and whether you're okay-enough with the NT.

Could I just ask about expectations? Yes. Did I? Also yes. Did I gain clarity? Nawp.

Okay. I feel better about all that now. The protocol that worked:

PM of: cry, chew gum, S independently apologizes for not being supportive the past two years, sandalwood incense, sleepytime tea, weighted blanket, cat on lap, playing Dordogne x20 minutes, watching North of North x1 episode, 5 mg melatonin, binaural sleep sounds w/ rain

AM after: 16 oz. instant coffee, noticing I don't want to go out to eat so respectfully declining to do so, instant oatmeal with collagen and peanut butter, more cat, journaling, crying, lemon-lime Waterloo seltzer, more sandalwood incense, "My Tiny Tarot Practice" episodes about Justice and the Queen of Wands.

"Justice is not black or white thinking, it is not necessarily the force of the law. I think of justice in the tarot as the forever effort to align our actions with our values. And the attention paid to the space between how we act and what we believe. Because I think for so many of us (for all of us in fact) we are forced (or choose) to act in ways that are not aligned with what we say or believe to be most important in our lives. Under the oppressive forces of the world that we live in we are often forced into bad decisions. We are often given choices that are not, in fact, free choices. But it's not simply the systems or structures of our society that cause this, it's also the ways that we fail to know ourselves, to understand our motivations, to articulate what matters most to us or the values that we want to live our lives by, and therefore we can't act in alignment. We can't be balanced in our inner and outer worlds. And so, Rachel Pollack in 78 degrees of wisdom asks, 'If we don't understand ourselves, how can we expect to make a free choice?' And she argues that we have to see and accept our past in order to be able to step into the present and the future justly. So when this card arrives in a reading I'm often returned to my core values. Where am I acting in accordance with my beliefs? Where am I failing to do so? Justice sees all. And as Maria Menez [sp?] mentioned, identifies those energetic leaks. Because when I'm out of alignment and I'm acting in a way that's not aligned with my values, my life force leaks out of me. I lose integrity. And if I had to choose one key word for this card that's what it would be - it would be integrity. To me, integrity is that alignment between the value and action. Between inner belief and outer behavior. And I think that that's what Justice is seeking and calling forth from us." - Amelia Hruby 

* This is way more executive function than is typical for me and all before 9:30 AM, mind you.

**And I think some other factors that contributed to the overwhelm were:
-  my parents being there (I don't know if it's fair to say we don't get along, but it is fair to say that we stress each other out)
- S being there (a couple of members of my cohort and a couple of professors know bits and pieces of what's been going on and there's a disconnect between the level of [emotional] support that I think everyone else in my cohort had probably experienced over the past couple of years that he just...didn't/wasn't able to do? And sitting there while D was thanking all the spouses and SOs for snacks, support, encouragement and taking up the slack was just...not as applicable to me and that didn't feel good)
- guilt for not doing much of anything to help with this event
- the emotional release of this being it; we're off on clinicals in three weeks

Another Period

 There was this one photo-compilation about ballet I read over and over again when I was a kid (late elementary...early middle?) and the photographer/author was the sister of the photographic subject. She interviewed her sister at length about many different things and it was drenched in black-and-white photos of her sister at the barre, in pointe shoes, stretching, applying makeup, taking off makeup. I have one memory of a photo of the sister soaking in the bath, but surely that's a step too far even for The Period? But what I vividly remember is reading, and then immediately needing to look up, the word: sybaritic.  The ballerina sister went to great lengths to define her winding-down process after a hard night of ballet. This included cold cream, self-massage, and soaking in a bath. She said that some would criticize her as being sybaritic. I would not. That all sounds amazing and like the patriarchy trying to get on a sister for treating herself, y'know?

Myself, I'm dabbling in the sybaritic. Dry sauna for five minutes! Steam room for five minutes! A bath! Ten minutes in the hot tub! Thinking about the tanning bed/scheduling a facial. I thank my cortisol for its service and wish it well and away from me at whatever current level it's at. Which is...something they don't test for in routine hormone panels? I don't think? I will totally look at my My Chart again, though, I can't remember shit let alone my own percentages and numbers of hormones and CBCs and things unless they're dreadfully abnormal.

Meeting Tuesday night with a psychiatric nurse practitioner about...meds, I guess? Escitalopram was not doing what I needed it to so I Need To Talk About That with someone Specialized I guess because my PA was a little uncertain about My Deal. Me too, girl. So - idk. That's good I guess!

Had a dream last night that T was helping out with getting ready for Easter. There was some tension about Getting Things Right, and I had hella guilt in the dream (and hella guilt in real life) about Not Being Good at Emotional Labor. L had a dream last night about the Easter Bunny knocking on her door and having a party in Homer, which sounds amazing. Love that for her. Easter on the brain, I guess. Ahem. How was your Easter?

I'm trying to wind down because The Thing That I Left Behind in Homer this weekend was (drumroll) melatonin. *sigh* I suppose I could have technically picked some more up on the way back into town but I...didn't want to. So now: tea and hopefulness. Because I used caffeine, audiobooks, and playlists from 2022-til'-now to get me through the four-hour drive home.

Backing it up in case I didn't (I probably didn't) explain: we drove to Homer this weekend, which is a beautiful seaside town where the ocean is a shade of aquamarine such that photos just don't do justice. You know what I mean! ...probably? There's a beach and a spit and driftwood, you're expected to eat your body weight in fish and spend scandalous amounts of money on charter fishing and meals and ferries to Seldovia and wherever else off the coast. But it was sunny while we were there and we stayed in an amazing house and the road to Homer is an idyllic wind through snow-capped mountains, forested faux-alps, landscape that looks pretty cool but was also devastated by wildfires recently so YMMV, and coastal tableaux reminiscent of Skyrim x1 million. So I can't be too mad at it. B.D. Wong narrates a mean The Mouse and the Motorcycle which was one of my favorite Beverly Cleary books growing up, so that was fun, and highly recommend. The most recent time I tried to explain what it was about, the person I was talking to said, "Oh, like Stuart Little?" and...no. Just because there's a mouse...why not, just like Despereaux? Or, just like Redwall? I see how it is!

I was also consumed by this thought on the way home that there must be a protocol somewhere of what ladies with Nerves did in the 1700s to 1800s. And, if there is, can I get in on that? The answer, from the most cursory research ever, seems to be: staring at the wall, drinking milk, and eating meat. And idk about that. Seems sketchy. I would much rather do sybaritic stuff, get my terminal degree, exercise, and make elaborate plans to get trick myself into drinking enough water and tea and eating more than two food groups. I think I was hoping for more like: Onn Day 1 goe to the Seaside, partake inn thee fresh aire; Onn Day 2 paint a watercolour daguerrotype haha you cannot as those twain are divers mediums; Onn Day 3 pratcise thee harpsichorde - but unfortunately, no.

Alright. Time to cuddle my cat and call it good.

All Stories About Conflict are Incomplete

The promises, promises of summer

I first started taking dance classes when I was 5 years old at the Broadway Academy of Dance. We were driving by one day and saw it was under construction. I think I urged my mom to stop by and ask when they would be opening? That was when I met Miss Lisa and her husband, a construction worker and ex-high school football player. She was from Oklahoma (and still lived in Oklahoma, actually). She'd end up traveling down to Texas every day while she maintained her studio in Paris, which was about an hour drive. One day in class she told us she got pulled over for speeding on her way down to Paris, but that they'd let her off because she explained that she was choreographing in the car! She used to be in pageants and said the pageant girls used to wrap their breasts in duct tape and then pull it off to make the breasts perkier - but she herself never did that. She also said she used to be a figure skater until she injured herself and pivoted to dance. Where was competitive figure skating happening in Oklahoma? Beats me.

Every time I see a pair of scissors on the floor (and that's fairly often) I think of a major plot point in the Emily of New Moon series by L.M. Montgomery in which she runs downstairs, distraught due to Reasons and trips over a sewing basket. She spears her foot on a pair of scissors and contracts blood poisoning. This kicks off a chain of events including a psychic vision/fever dream. The moral of the story is don't leave scissors on the floor ffs and don't leave wells open. Shut them! Shut the wells. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily%27s_Quest    

In a quest to find non-violent mo' betta' games to play with my six-year-old I hit up Game Pass the other day. (We're an Xbox household, although my heart belongs to Playstation.) We found Little Kitty, Big City and a French game called Dordogne. We haven't finished either (because I am trying to write part of a research paper that is mais time consuming), but so far both are soothing and beautiful in very different ways and I'm very much enjoying.

We're going to go see Dog Man today and find out what that's all about. I'm a bit of an Axe-Cop loyalist myself, but there was a void of age-appropriateness and I'll be damned if Dav Pilkey didn't fill it. Before that it's going to be the Unitarian Universalist Church again (cautiously optimistic!) which will involve a coming-of-age ceremony for a kid I had in preschool and think about fairly frequently, then Zumba class, then visiting in-laws, Dog Man, and finally a meeting that I'm not whatsoever jazzed about because it feels like a lot of hand-holding. Yes, there's a fair amount of repetition with this paper. Yes, we should probably adjust it a bit. Do you want to let me do that? No? Do you want to do that? Also no? 

Our regularly-scheduled weather has switched from snow to rain so the vibe have reverted to PNW-style-stuff.

I have nothing to put here

It's been fairly consistently Spy Kids all the time around here. I guess I never watched the series when it came out? I can't tell if I was slightly too old or if I was way too into Jonny Quest or actual James Bond or what. But what I do remember is that I thought being a spy was a legitimate career choice and very real possibility for me. The first password I ever remember creating was "moneypenny"! And anyway, L seems to have inherited my love of espionage. They're not bad for what they are. Robert Rodriguez sure does know how to do...that one particular thing! Yup. 

The stories about my former roommate in the fairy house (O) continue: I was doing my practicum hours at the local Waldorf school (there's only one) and the only way it worked out was to get there at, like, 6:00 AM on a Wednesday and then stay three hours. One day I was stopped at a stoplight and headed home when a red Jeep pulled up behind me. It was O. He hopped out of his car and ran up next to my window. He stood there for a moment, smiled and side-eyed me. Then, as soon as the light turned green he ran back to the Jeep and went about his day. Iconic. He also had a dowager cat that he walked on a harness in the garden every spring!

My subconscious has been working through some Friendship Stuff lately. I've had dreams about the director of the dance company I was in for two years lately - and more than one. Do I spend a lot of conscious time thinking about her? No! Does her dance company pop up on my Facebook feed pretty frequently? Yes! Am I guilty about how I quit? ...I don't know. Yes? I didn't do a good job of...repair? Or being completely honest about my feelings? Not, I guess, that they matter(ed).

I went to a burlesque show last weekend and my least favorite thing was the small talk about the experience. "Have you ever been to a burlesque show before?" Um, yes. I am part of the company, actually. But maybe that's hard to comprehend? Maybe there's a disconnect between how people see me and what they're seeing or expecting to see on stage? Or maybe it's just one of the pieces of selfhood that I don't necessarily trot out in future because it's too complicated? There's just so much shit like that.

The snow is relentless and there is yet another slow leak from a bolt going through a completely new tire!

Otherwise it's research research research and responding to emails all while feeling like Flash from Zootopia. 

Ciao, bella.