Tag Archives: Work

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First Day

I have a picture of him with his tiny fist pumping in the air, jumping off the stairs from the front of his school where he attended a full-day early childhood education program–like pre-kindergarten. Today is the first of 47-days. He is no longer a hobbit-sized tow-headed Energizer Bunny. He stood in his egress window smoking cigarettes on Sunday night until I woke up. He always shuts down and says, “Send me back to my Dad.” It took about an hour on Sunday night and he finally shifted. He said that he was petting our tortie in the basement and saw the shelf with all the books that I used to read him and teared up. He and I could go to family therapy twice a week. He doesn’t have an off-cycle. He’s defiant and often very rude. I just want him to finish high school. He hates it and needs to be done. Today feels like my first day too.

The climber did get sick. I don’t know if she has COVID. The nice guy who also commutes once a week with us does. I was disappointed to not get her all to myself in the car. That could only happen now in the afternoon one day or possibly May 22nd through early June. However, I must note that she said that we need to go back to our climbing spot two-weeks ago and directly invited me to the indoor ice climbing gym last Monday. She sent me pictures of her in a crack way up some giant sandstone formation and a sunset picture on Sunday when I sent her a small text re: I’ll pick you up and text when I leave my house at 7:20. We seem good. I want a get together though.

Vegan texted me yesterday. It said that she hoped that my week was off to a great start and that it was wonderful meeting up on Friday and having the introduction to Green Goddess dressing. I texted back that when she heals, I want to climb with her. She is accepting and will be a good climbing partner–just can’t kiss or hug her.

I’m not going to ever text GA again. If she comes to my city, I hope that she gets ahold of me. I would call her if my partner-in-prowl and I do a workshop in GA, but that’s it. I’ll get tall redhead’s number if I ever see her again. I’m excited for guitar class tonight. Spring is on it’s way; although it’s cold as shit. Today could mark the first day of the rest of my life.

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More loose ends

I process things pretty slow. I’m also long-suffering. Those qualities do not make for a good match in exclusive partnership. Anyway, as I write all of the time as I’ve been doing since last November these features have made me want independence, and to love and enjoy others in specific places and times. I won’t live with someone again until I am in my 80s and need some help from someone younger who I pay with whom I have a business relationship. I will not remarry. I think that monogamy works for a handful of people. I have not been exposed to a marriage that I thought was working for both people in my sphere. I know that they exist, but it always seems like massive sacrifices are made by one person more than the other when I know both people. That is where I am.

I had talked to my ex who is dying slowly on January 21st and was on car adapter through speakers with her and her wife. The conversation was bizarre. It spanned medical procedures and the new cars that they’re thinking about buying. It made sense finally to me why she reconciled with her wife. I guess she was broadcasting their business on Facebook, and talking about their fights and possible divorce. I don’t get on Facebook unless someone tells me that I have to log in: eg. pickleball dues or a post that they need me to address. Didn’t ask how I was. Didn’t inquire about my son who she always says that she adores. I get she’s on a transplant list. I knew all the stuff that had happened via text when I donated to her Go Fund Me. I don’t like cars. I bought a sport utility vehicle in 2008 and still drive it. It was two-years-old. I repair it and put parts in it. I’m not going to hustle down there. I’ll go see them when it’s necessary.

I have a sinus infection. I guess what is going around is bacterial. I’m NOT getting antibiotics. Work was difficult, but definitely not impossible. And then I bought everything and took it for the first time last night, and I slept through the night except to blow my noise once and my throat is good. One night of vitamins and such. I always have Kickass Immune and EmergenC, and still have a little bit of the Chinese herbs that my ex-mother-in-law used to send, but I needed to add these until I felt cessation in sinus pressure and a sore throat:

I COVID tested negative–again–why don’t I get COVID? I have to be careful with zinc. It sends to nauseate me or make me throw up. I think that the sources on the left were more water soluble so it was fine. I also made mushroom risotto, chicken cutlets with panko and kale chips in the oven last night, so I was pretty full when I took these zinc.

I didn’t see the photographer at the art performance. She texted me the next day and said that she was texting with the woman who I was able to sit with–and her boyfriend and a lesbian couple. She said that she was sad not to run into me. So, I’ve texted with her a little bit about the sale of house this summer. I don’t actually want to hike or cycle with her. I want a professional relationship. I saw a few pictures of her recently and didn’t find her attractive. At the beginning of April, we’ll do a walkthrough pending the late afternoon that works for the tenants who pay bills there. I’m not hugging her and will bring my son if I can make it work with his schedule. He’s a good buffer. He’s also very good looking, so he distracts people.

He’s going back to high school. Not his high school, but one in which he can blend online and in person classes. He told me last night that he wants mostly in person classes. I don’t care, and am glad he’ll have a diploma instead of a GED. There still is some stigma. In his case, it’s truly being lazy. I have to hire a driver. Uber and Lyft have too broad a window, and I want him to be on time. He can take the city bus home. His Dad can take him once a week, and I can take him once a week. Hopefully, it won’t be as expensive as his out-of-pocket therapy that ended a week ago was. He has to go to school nine weeks only–not a year-and-a-half. They’ll get his schedule done on Monday. His personal essay for the application said that in 6th grade the friends that he had controlled him rather than knew him, and that COVID killed all his motivation for school. I wonder who else has a student like my son?

I have to study today and also read. I have a training of trainers event on Tuesday and Wednesday and work on Monday and have convention things all day on Thursday and Friday. There is a corporate sponsored party on Tuesday night as well. Maybe I should have my son stay at our house and I should stay in the hotel with an old friend? No, I won’t sleep well and that seems a little bit 20-something. Regardless, I’m excited for the convention.

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Other topics

I was in our group consultation via videoconference for a new modality that I’m hoping to receive certification, and got a text from a woman who is recently divorced who was in the consultation with me. I know her through an intern that I supervised in 2011-2012. She is really sarcastic, and an angry vegan. Do you know what an angry vegan is? They make it their entire identity. However, she’s a newer climber and probably way better than me, but she texted that she’s getting on the wall this next week, so we’re going to go climbing. Attraction to her would never grow, but I am so glad to have someone that I can belay and watch so I can go up routes. That is something that I’ve mentioned helps me to get up a route. Also, now I’ll have to learn the gris gris.

I went to the art show. It was really cool. I was sleepy though so a little encumbered. A man asked if he could join me at the standing table and he was fun to talk to, but I knew after he returned with a another drink that he’d ask more questions about me and it would become a thing. Fortunately, a woman who also sings with my best friend was sitting down with her boyfriend and a couple of lesbians and had an open seat. Why are men hitting on me all the time now? I think that I’m going to have a samurai ponytail when I go out in mixed company to expose my undercut–particularly when I’m in a dress and heels. My boss bought me a drink, but it was our domestic version of an IPA, and their products give me headaches. I do better with small batch and microbrews. The concert and native dancing was phenomenal. I went through a drive through and got a grass-fed hamburger and chili cheese fries. I’m not a vegan, and don’t think that I’m angry.

I slept well three nights this week. I have a sweet spot of understanding. When my mood is semi-hideous, I need to stay up later than usual. So, I’ll do planks, stretching and a short meditation. I need to see that now that I don’t pay for Amazon music if I can still get a listen for a 2-7 minute program that was simple and really good. I’ve not found something comparable on Spotify. If anyone has a recommendation for what I could listen to in my Pixel buds while planking and then stretching, please comment or email me here.

My son is still lying. He’s only taken the GED Math Practice test. That means that I have to endure the wrath today while he takes Language Arts and do the same pattern before dodgeball tomorrow for either Science or Social Studies. I will buy him something for his future guitar if he takes the final one on Monday while I’m at work. He also talked to his ex-girlfriend for hours last night and was going to get back with her. Mind you after she blew up his other ex-girlfriend’s Dad’s birthday party he was “never speaking to her again.” I need to help him with a friendship with her. She can’t come to our house anymore under the guise of friendship though. She’s a sweet kid, but beyond manipulative and really unhealthy mentally and physically.

I’m prowling tonight. At 8, I am dropping off my son at his Dad’s apartment. I am packing gloves and his big down jacket so he can walk home. It won’t get even near the freezing mark for two-days given La Niña. I’m going to work with him today and watching his team play and then I’m going to use the machines and make sure that he does cardio. He skipped Monday, because he has a cold. He caught a cold because he vapes and is overweight and has shitty sleep hygiene. That latter is post-COVID and hasn’t shifted. When he was an athlete he slept 7-13 hours. The latter was after a weekend of sometimes 11 basketball games.

There are some really cute ladies on the other dodgeball teams. I need to get close to them to make sure that they’re in their mid-thirties. I just can’t be serious about conversations with anyone under 35. It makes me feel like I’m chilling with a high school-aged client and that is super creepy and skeeves me out completely.

I had a weird dream about my ex-wife Thursday night. I can’t remember it now and had to be at work super early all week and worked to nearly five after being there at seven-fifteen on Friday. If I have a dream that I want to reconsider, I write it down my hand while still in bed, but had to work too much this week, so I don’t remember it.

My lead at my main site likes to schedule complicated meetings all in one week. It makes my life and another specialist’s life hellish. She also is a little simple. The other specialist said something that caused me to laugh until I cried and I could no longer stand. Our lead doesn’t read very well or pronounce things well, and also has a tendency to suddenly not understand legal procedures for some complicated meetings. It’s an odd presentation. Likely induced by stress. Anyway, the other specialist who was incidentally my pickleball partner last fall was talking about some procedures and our manager being confused and she said, “It’s just exhausting. I can’t keep up with all the fucking stupidity.” I told her that I was glad that I wasn’t wearing eye makeup because I would have had it everywhere, and I also had lung butter for the better portion of the day from laughing so hard after she said that. It went in my 2023 quotations cell phone file. Also, in there is, “Would you ever date _____? She does all that white people shit.”

My colleagues keep me sane. I’m really lucky. I make good money and love so many of them.

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Look back on three-days

I was scared of dodgeball. Wham! HUGE gay guys winging the balls against concrete. Everyone was 10-20 years younger than me. Wow. Why did I sign up? I got better as it went on and in our last loss I nailed a guy and it bounced off him, but one of his teammates caught it. Damn. I was the last one on our side. I didn’t go to the bar afterward, but may next Sunday. It’s difficult because I work on Mondays pretty early and have to leave at 7:20. I am going to practice with my son this weekend.

Monday was nice. I went into her office and chatted with her. She noticed the red highlights and I told her that I had the undercut and just turned around and made her lift my hair to examine the mountains and the horizon. She petted the buzz too, which felt nice. I was standing over her desk for awhile too but one of the people who shares with her was there intially, and after that woman left, we talked more. I was wearing a fitted pink shirt. She kept looking at my breasts. I got a little charge out of that and noted it and was glad that I could meet her eyes well, which I can’t always do because then I kept noticing how much she was checking me out.

I worked all morning and then in the afternoon went back to her office. I said, “Your sweater matches your eyes,” and she looked down and smiled big. Then we talked a little she walked out of her office. We stood at the window at the end of the hallway together. We talked and talked. She had never used the ice tool that I had just tried, and said that she knows it’s safer because you don’t have anything sharp. I told her that I was bruised all up so couldn’t wear booty shorts to dodgeball given the bruising from crashing into the wall over and over and she laughed. We talked about work, and I said, “I was thinking that when I was presenting last week that I remembered that you need to imagine the audience in their underwear and wondered if it works in reverse? Except for you, you wouldn’t use imagination, it’s a memory.” She blushed a ton and I said, “Oh, good! That was the effect that I hoped to get–with you blushing,” and she said, “Well, it’s that the heart rate increases.” She was still red so I kept looking at her. She adjourned the conversation and went back to her office eventually, and my partner at work said at the end of the day, “I saw you two talking for a long time!” I didn’t say, it’s because _____ has seen me in my underwear. (Wonder when I’ll have the same thing with her?) I quickly saw some purple ones–she had to take off a base layer under her hiking pants–the night that became 3:40 in the morning of Halloween and the same night she lifted the back of her shirt and I kissed all around a purple sports bra on her sculpted back. However, after the ballet, I was in a bra and underwear for a couple hours in my bed.

I was walking home from the liquor store last week talking to my partner at work and she said, “Would you ever date _____? She does all that white people shit.” and I stopped walking for a second and said, “She’s cute, but she’s really, really busy, and does real outdoor stuff. I couldn’t keep up with much of the stuff that she does and she’s a real dance teacher and dancer. It was fun climbing with her. I certainly would be open to doing something with her again.” All that is true. Again, her ball, her court, and not asking her out again.

I was at work today and was pretty busy. During my mid-day obligation that I have daily at that site I was walking with one of my colleagues whom I adore and she said that she’d been out on two dates. We traded some stories. She’s my ex-wife’s age (three years younger than me). I asked her if she’d date a 32-year-old and she said, “Hell, yes.” I showed her the climber later (us at the ballet) and she said, “She’s cute!” I told her that in two weeks when I’m on convention that I was going to find her a 6’4″ Swedish skier that she can see weekends in Europe. We’re both newly divorced, don’t ever want to remarry, and agree with the appropriate STD testing protocol that you could love and be intimate with 2-3 partners. We both have side work and make good money and have one kid. She likes men. So, I’m going to find her more men for her circle. Not men from my dodgeball league :). She’s a cool person and we always laugh together. I told her that in addition to an STD talk, I don’t want to have sex with any woman whom I’m not in love with. I also told her that I know that I could be in love with 2-3 different women concurrently.

I slept like shit last night. Sunday night was good and last night was tough. My son is with his Dad tonight. He only has to take one more practice test for the GED and his scores have been so high that he doesn’t have to take the full test in a center and can do it at home as long as he does well on the last one that he has. He’s taking that Friday. I’m taking him and his best friend out to dinner tomorrow night. He turns 17.

I think that things could be getting a little easier in all respects. I’m hoping so.

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Snowed in

I hope that my group therapy isn’t cancelled tonight. It may be. All government and city entities are closed today. When I got up this morning, I thought it was overblown, but now it’s steadily snowing again. It’s actually beautiful. I’ll shovel some of it shortly.

I want to get a few groceries and pick up my son’s meds. I’m getting his SSRI stockpiled so he can I can taper it when he’s more stable. I’ll go get his stimulant out of the nurse’s office at school so he can take one when he takes the GED practice test and one more when he takes the real thing. Then he’ll have to get another job. I am still upset that he blew one of them, as he could have had two nights and a weekend day going for his coaching, but at least his boss let him keep one gig. The season changes in April, so maybe he can coach three teams, and do some other piece work.

I have still been playing and singing, and doing some with him. He is really good at strumming. I’ve not practiced classical which I took in high school, so hitting alternating notes is pretty difficult for me and I want to sing and chord, but strumming patterns are difficult. He drummed while I played and sang last night and I want to make sure that when he’s not doing a closing shift that we keep doing that when it’s night. So fun for us and he’s a really good drummer. He had toyed with getting a 5-year music degree for awhile and did a university visit. I don’t know what he’ll wind up doing and it could take him some time. I don’t want to chime in anymore. I’m actually relieved that he is dropping out because when your kid doesn’t go to class, it’s incredibly burdensome. Seems pointless.

The climber texted me a couple times yesterday. It will be nice to see her on Friday. I still won’t ask her out though. That’s her ball and not mine.

I’ll text the photographer Happy Birthday tomorrow. I’d be shocked if in the next two months that she texted me to plan a bike ride. I won’t ever touch her again though.

I kiss my best friend every time I see her. I kiss her goodbye too. Most of my other friends are not ones that I hug because they give out that don’t hug me vibe. One thing that I actually loathe is the shitty hug. Do you know what a shitty hug is? You get kinda close and turn your head and then put your arms around the shoulders of the person that you’re “hugging” and pat. I think that I’d rather scrape a plate over and over with a metal fork. Why even try?

This explanation brings me to my friend and my new rules for the Prowl. We’re not sitting with each other anymore, but will rather reconvene. We’ll work the room and talk to women and then touch bases at the bar and not on the couch. I’m going to scan too and talk to women and then settle. For our first two Prowls we sat with each other. We need to rove and talk about it. I sat alone Sunday night at a different bar, and then got hit on by men. Not sure why because I had on a beanie with a rainbow flower stitched on it. When that article of clothing also got complimented by a man who just kept staring at me from his table full of friends, I just took it off completely. Men are certainly emboldened when they are having some drinks.

I’m going to lift weights at home today. I’m going to do bench, some strategic bicep work, and forearms.

I really need to recycle mail too. Ugh. I’m missing a therapy manual too, and don’t have any clue where it is. I paid to have it printed because it’s somewhat scripted and it was better to have it in a binder to use. It cost me a ton to print, and I need to find it. I think that I may have brought it to the class that I taught in February, so I wouldn’t have left it at the University, as I’m good about getting everything into cloth book bags when I tear down the room. It’s definitely not in the building that is my main site because I worked on the file cabinet there yesterday waiting for a contentious meeting. I had my colleagues go through stuff in my other building because we’re all doubled-up now and they didn’t find it, but I want to take a peek too. Can I just tell you how glad that I’ll be when I have my own office again?

I’m starving. I try to wait to eat 12-hours after I ate. My son and I watched two episodes of “Supernatural” after we jammed, and I was eating swiss cheese. Hahahaha. So funny. I’d made a homemade pot pie for dinner, but he and I had some wine that our neighbors made so I was hungry. I have to hold out about half an hour more before I make some pumpkin pancakes so it’s 12-hours apart.

The last thread in my mind is that I’m mad again. I actually almost called my ex-wife this weekend and then mentally talked myself off that ledge. It’s weird to spend 9-years with someone (and married for 8), and then they’re poof. It wouldn’t do any good though. I remember one time that she moved out and sent me the video link to “Mirror” by Justin Timberlake and said that I was the love of her life and we have to try. So, we tried, and tried, and tried, and tried. Chapter is closed, but I wanted to talk to her this weekend. She’s moved out permanently this time and lives two states away. It would be great if she was more stable now that she lives with her Mom. That’s the energy I’ll send.

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Change

I know that I will just be meeting girls this summer and hanging out.  I get how to do that and how it’s different than 1) taking a girl home from a bar, or 2) emailing someone so different than any woman than you’ve been exposed to previously, and getting caught up in the elixir of passion.  I can do that.

However, I don’t know what to do about work.  I need to talk with the state regulatory board today and see what supervisors would have to fill-out when they sign off on my work.  I think that I would like to talk to the professor who has been mentoring me.  I talked with a licensed clinical social worker on Saturday and she told me that licensing boards are actually more interested that your supervisors actually work where they supervise you so that they understand the system.  She said that it’s less about the hours that they work and more about if they have adequate knowledge of the system.  I still think that I’m gambling though.  I can’t really do that.

Part of me wants to stay so I can more accurately control the gathering of my data.  That has to take place in August, which is both scary and sad.  I do have a phone appointment with the boss of this department on Wednesday so I can talk to her.

Again, I need to speak with the manager of our dual diagnosis program too, because I need some more experience that is purely clinical.  I think that given that I’m 2/3 done with practicum that I get community mental health, but I would like to see a different day treatment.  I am familiar with this setting given that I tested for it 2004 – 2007 and worked in one up until I moved most recently (2010).  However, I think that ours, given that it contracts with a large mental health corporation, is run differently than ones that don’t have that component.  I need to talk to him this week too.

I don’t know how I feel about the new setting.  When I screened, it seemed like the boss was just neutral.  I think that many administrators are that way.  Then it’s getting used to a brand new set of rules and two new buildings.  That is a lot to deal with, but I certainly have done it before.  It’s been since 2009 that I really thought seriously about moving, and then did at the very beginning of 2010.

I AM SCARED.  I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO.

I am here… Again.