Everyday Life

There is a bias in the stories we tell. A skew toward the exciting moments, the vacations, the crises. But the mundane events of our lives are worth recording as well. Unglamorous as they may be, these chronicles are essential to an authentic narrative. . .

Granted, I have trouble telling any anecdote without some degree of histrionics, which is part of the reason I'm never bored. I can find the excitement in a stop at the 7-11 for Cheetos and gasoline. I'll attach photos of everyday life with this post. They may not follow the report, but they make it pretty.

Here is a glimpse of my week thus far, not atypical, though if you've known me long enough, you've quickly figured out that I have no such luck as to fall into any kind of predictable, conventional grind.

Sunday I woke late (following the Swing Shift party the night before.) I rolled out of bed, literally, and unintentionally, rolled off of my air mattress in my DC room and onto the hardwood floor. I then deflated the mattress, put it back in its box, and later returned it to the Bed, Bath, and Beyond What you Should Pay store, because the mattress SUCKED - remote control for firmness not withstanding - it BLOWS. Sorry for the slang outburst. I warned you that I can be histrionic. I got showered and dressed, loaded up my Mini, and started the drive west, then south.

I gathered up the darlings from their father and then met up with a group of friends from the Stonewall Brigade Band for a few rounds of bowling. Speaking of SUCKING. I scored like a 69, even with the kiddie bumpers in the gutters. The kiddies love bowling, btw.


Afterwards, I went shopping for the replacement bed, helped yet again by BB, who is clearly the best EX-boyfriend EVER, so shut-up with any comments about his helping me with the bed. We found a great deal on a "Euro Lounger" couch-like thing that opens into a full sleeper. I'm excited about this baby, for its space-saving + multi-position + sleepover (with the kids, of course!) possibilities, but haven't yet gotten it up the skinny, steep staircase and put it together, much less slept on it, so you will have to wait for an official rating. (BB hauled it back to DC for me, coordinating with my roommate for its delivery.)

We grabbed a quick dinner while playing tick-tack-toe with EG who is still at an age where you let her win and she truly believes she is the MASTER and consoles you kindly about your multiple losses. Then Sunday night was an exhausted drag things into the house in the icy cold, spill EG's Sprite, which she insisted on bringing from the restaurant, all over the floor, and scramble to get ready for the next day's resumption of school and clients at the house and bills to be paid, etc. (Reminds me of Swing Shift - heard about their rehearsal last night, when someone complained that a song was being played too slowly, and the vocalist turned it into "Dragging (vs Walking) My Baby Back Home.")

I honestly feel as if the treadmill never gets turned off. It is still going, right now as I write, I just kind of slide off of it for these moments of sanity producing avoidance of the mega-ton of things that have to be done. Each day is a constant barrage of "What must be done next?" Anything but work and parenting necessities feels like stolen time.



Monday was a blur of clients. I can be attuned and present in the moment throughout the day, and then at the end of like 9 people in a row, I'm trying to remember who I saw at 10 a.m.. I skipped band rehearsal to work on an application/screen test script for a television program on which I've been asked to possibly appear as an "expert" - HA - I've got someone out there fooled! Its a season-long public-service type thing about women's health. My "expert" opinion will be that there is no such thing as an expert on the human condition, that we are all perpetual students, and that a clients' best wisdom comes from within - psychotherapists are slightly more experienced guides accompanying people on their challenging journeys. Anyway, not sure I will get the part, nor that if it is offered that the commitment will be worth what it takes from my time with my girls.



I am needed most by the two I brought into the world. They need to be taken to piano and Musikgarten. They need to sit at the dinner table and eat meals as a family. They need to have friends over after school. MG and a neighbor were making videos for You-Tube with the pet rats in their hands as the characters - MG voicing-over with a Texas-twang. EG and her friend put panties and tights on their heads and blankets and capes over their shoulders and were spies on a mission to uncover the filmmakers' true identities. And the filmmakers actually turned out to be evil villians, relentlessly torturing the younger children for their espionage. MG got off the bus today and was livid at the younger neighbor who had hit MG with a lunch box for "no apparent region." Of course I knew that MG's teasing from yesterday was provocation enough, but what region should have justified the violence, I don't know.

Tuesday's and Wednesday's clinical schedules were lighter, but I've been slammed with the chores that had to be fitted into a shorter than usual amount of time -unpacking, laundry, grocery shopping, cooking, mopping, housework, homework assistance, girls' music practice, business management/marketing/billing, pet care, ad nauseum. . .ending up the Wednesday evening with dinner out and a trip to Lowes for window-coverings for the new place.

It is quite fortunate, or probably a result of their single parents' status, that my daughters are adept at entertaining themselves. (Their father and I share them approximately 50/50 and so I don't know that I do more than any other parent over the course of a week, but when I'm on, it's all ME - you know if there is say a messy illness on my watch, then I'm the one cleaning it, and losing sleep, and loading up the kids in the middle of the night for a trip to the Walmart for Pepto-Bismol and then working same as usual the next day so I can pay the bills by myself. And the same is true for their daddy, and we're lucky he's a good one. So the girls know how to keep themselves occupied. MG has now voraciously consumed 4 1/2 of the Rick Riordan series and EG is non-stop IMAGINATION. Today she was pretending that she had four children and was miming gulping down beer with her breakfast because she needed to lose the baby weight (no joke - and no, honestly, there is no role model for this behavior in her life . . .that I know of.) One of her children became ill and had to stay at home in bed, thus she decided she would entertain him. She retrieved a costume from the attic and continued in character going out for Mexican and to the hardware store as a penguin. None of us could suppress the giggling when MG grabbed hold of the beak and controlled her sibling like a puppet. EG soon had a scarf tied about her and was being pulled across the ice outdoors, and at Lowes, they were both "pengrins" - as EG calls them -chasing each other around the store, with their legs together from the knees up, until they actually toppled a cart over on top of themselves, I came running, and found them still laughing, uncontrollably. They have inherited their mother's proclivity for creating fun and humour in most any situation.



Bed time was delayed by my taking a crisis call from a client. In business by myself - I am basically always on call. It is nice now to snuggle close to EG, though it has made the typing more of a challenge. . .



So, on to the next day - always a struggle to go away for work, three hours from my most precious connections - during their time with daddy. Even though I would not have them with me if I were here, psychologically, being closer feels good. But we do what we've got to do, the best we can, and enjoy all the variety of experiences that everyday brings.

California Dreaming

Last May, 2009, I took a mostly solo trip to California. I flew to LA from DC, rented a brand spanking new British racing green Mini Cooper S convertible with tan leather interior, and hit the road.



My destination was nature's beauty; my sustenance was visiting with dear friends - particularly friends who are my adopted, extended family from the American Academy of Psychotherapists (AAP). I am in an organization that is central to my practice and personal fulfillment. The Academy, www.aapweb.com, is a professional organization like no other I've ever encountered. AAP provides connection with other therapists from different disciplines, superb and experiential continuing education, and basically group therapy for therapists. Here, copied from our webiste, is a quote from my colleague Howie Halpern, about the Academy, that describes my experience in the group, albeit almost 40 years later:

"It was terrifying to be exposed to all that creative craziness, and to expose how I worked. I saw members of the Academy, with great courage, dare to take risks, to step off the ledge, to open themselves to attack and criticism. I saw us learn from each other and bring our new insights back to our homes all across the country, like bees from different locales bringing nectar from a particularly dazzling flower garden back to their home hives. I was never more anxious and never grew so much."



Some of my colleagues in the Academy - particularly those in my "family group" - are as close to me as anyone else in my life, and last May I was needing some self-care time - time to be alone in nature and time with people who nurture me. My first stop was Hermosa Beach, and the home of LS & RS. LS is the Academy's current president, joining a long list of distinguished presidents which includes Carl Rogers. I had a lovely dinner with LS and her husband and slept on her therapy couch. Awakened at 5 am the next morning with a flirty text message from back east, I spent some time with LS & her daughter, looking at the tiny hummingbirds in a nest on her back patio, and walking on the pier before I headed north to Malibu and US 1

I drove the Pacific Coast Highway that day, from LA up to Big Sur, stopping in Santa Barbara, and frequently for pictures along the drive.
I visited with elephant seals in the evening and spent the night in a yurt. Several phone calls throughout the day, with someone I had started correspondence with in November of 08, but had not yet met, had me longing for romance, for company, and daydreaming such that when I remember this day, I often think of the person I was talking to, as if he had been there with me.

The next day was spectacular: hiking in Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park, shopping for artwork in the town of Big Sur, lunch in Monterey, and eventually a visit with two other "family group" members, another LS and his wife DC at their home in the Berkeley Hills. (This initials thing is kind of limiting.)


I spent the night with my Academy friend & sometimes roommate, Gail, who lives in Mill Valley. We hiked in the Redwoods the next morning before I took off for Yosemite National Park.

I then spent about 36 hours in almost complete solitude, no cell phone or email signal.
I need this kind of retreat, periodically, from the demands of my work and my children. Time completely alone, thinking of no-one's needs but my own.

Eventually I joined my friend, BB for a day of motorcycle riding in Hollywood, a visit to the Getty, and an Air Show in Chino.




What a journey. Here are segments of letters written by me to my romantic correspondent around the time of my trip:


"At this time, you are still, to me, a chimera, a mirage, like an image in the desert - something that may or may not really be there, behind the swirling dust. I want to meet you in the flesh. . . My planned solitude during the trip to California was punctuated by (welcomed) intrusive thoughts about who you really are, how your voice would sound if you whispered in my ear, how you would smell, what your skin would feel like beneath my hands. Such unaccustomed free time for me is, apparently, dangerous; my fingers dialed your number exigently. What is it about you? . . . your pictures, our beguiling conversations? Or are you just an apparition; my own conception? Probably some of both, but I'd like the chance to rectify my projections with reality. . .I can almost taste the hollow of your neck and feel my face against yours as I try to sustain that balance between overpowering arousal and gently relaxing caress. . . I believe we can teach one another how to make love to one another best, slowly, over weeks of serene and tender evenings, such that once we do merge bodies it feels like a Big Sur wave - viewed from a cliff, looking out toward the horizon, watching gentle crests rise and fall, becoming larger and closer, until they crash into the shore . . .and then the cycle repeats. . .and if this is just a mirage, it feels terrific, in and of itself."
I can't paste what he wrote in response, because I don't have his permission.

Onward . . . back to the present tense.

working the SWING SHIFT

I am a groupie. The band is Swing Shift, a big band based in Northern Virginia, with about 20 members. http://www.swingshiftdc.com/ How my fan status began is one of those long stories that is better left untold - on the grounds that it might incriminate me. The first time I saw them play, in Bethesda, there were a number of GW sorority girls falling all over the band, basically doing strip teases on the dance floor. I am not nearly as brazen. Let me just emphasize that I have only dated two of the twenty members. That's not so bad, now is it? Sounds a lot better when you say it that way.

Though I'm not currently romantically involved with any Swing Shift members, no, no trumpet players (back right corner) nor vocalists, I managed to kind of crash the group's belated Holiday party. I showed up with my friend who will not let me post a picture of him from the evening - because of a tanning bed incident gone awry, he currently looks rather like an Oompa Loompa.


I brought a couple of Secret Santa gifts that were not at all appreciated by the mostly male band. Bath bombs from the LUSH http://www.lush.com shop in Georgetown are apparently not the thing to give boys. During the Secret Santa game, I first stole a Frank Sinatra compilation, only to have it taken away. Then I obtained David Sedaris's new book, Naked, which I'm quite excited to read.


Somehow, I ended up taking both gifts home and have been humming along to Sinatra since. The book will join a wait list of others and may get its cover creased by the end of 2010. The party was great fun, and my rum helped ease any of the relationship awkwardness that could have interfered.

The best part of the party, however, was the darling two-year-old hostess. This girl is a doll and highly intelligent. We took to each other so well, that one of the guests just assumed I was the Daddy's sister and the the baby's auntie. Well, why the heck else was I at this party? I was forgiven for crashing and bringing the awful Secret Santa gifts because I kept the baby happy for about two hours, until, that is she realized we'd lost the Sinatra CDs, slowly pushed her lower lip out, and then burst into heartwrenching tears. I'm certain my capitalizing on the baby's need for Sinatra had nothing to do with the CDs showing up in my automobile at the end of the evening.

I was in big trouble when my daughters saw the photos of me holding another child. She will be my last infidelity. I swore to my girls that I will not hold or read to or play this little piggy with any other children, ever.

Oh, and the banana pudding brought by the singer -- better than sex -- my mouth is still watering.

Hear Swing Shift - (see link below) - and you might just become a groupie, too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBEgcJIaegw

They are next playing at Blues Alley in Georgetown, sometime in February - I'll announce it when I get the date, and I will find out the date -- I have my ways.