I know it’s Wednesday, I KNOW, but it feels like Tuesday because I barely managed to sleep. You know that thing where you have a tiring day and you know the next day will be SUPER tiring, so you can’t fall asleep and then you inexplicably wake up at four a.m. and that’s just it? That.
Today I drive up to Westchester for my usual classes, plus the biweekly student meetings, plus all the biweekly student meetings I would normally come up for on Thursday. There was an error on the schedule and by the time I realized that, I had no childcare options for Thursday anymore.
Then I RUN to the car and pray for light traffic as I drive to a part of the city one should not drive to (the train has no chance to getting me there in time — in the old days I would have just said I couldn’t make it, which is perhaps what I should have done this time) and pay through the nose for parking so that I can pay through the nose for therapy. This one does EMDR and said actually insightful things on the phone and was willing to talk about his methods and so on. He is a friend of a smart friend, so I figure it’s worth a shot. Then I realized after getting off the phone that I recognized his voice because of a spot on This American Life about testosterone. Life in New York, I tell you what.
I contacted three potential therapists this time around, and they all got back to me: the power of the end of summer, I guess. One was busy and recommended someone else. One was this guy. One, recommended by two friends, called me right back but got prickly when I asked about her methods. (“Could you tell me about your philosophy and methods?” “I believe people are a combination of identity and experience. More stuff along this lines.” “So, what kinds of methods would you use for someone like me?” “I think I just answered that.”) She was otherwise nice, though, and gave me the names of two hypnotists she thought I should try. Digging into all this stuff while teaching the history of asylums and mental health sects in the US gives me more patience for wacky ideas (mostly because reading all this stuff brings up uncomfortable truths about how psychiatry has and hasn’t changed), but I’m going to try contemporary woo for now.
Post-woo, it’s off to Brooklyn Heights, another unparkable neighborhood, where I hope to be able to shelve the car long enough to go rehearse the Bach Christmas Oratorio with the choir I joined last fall. Here’s hoping listening to the first part in the car counts as practice. Then home, at the only time of day it’s ever truly hard to find parking.
I am tired already.
Yesterday, or Tuesday Part One, the kids and I almost finished making a cold frame for our garden bed. (We would have finished, too, if I hadn’t forgotten the screwdriver.) The Bean has been wild to have one since last winter; someone in our building had wood scraps for free and someone else threw away a poster in a huge, plexiglass frame. Jackalope only smacked her hands down into the wet finish of the wood twice.
Everyone was exhausted when we got home. The Bean was a certified pain in the rear about dinner. We’ve been having more full family meals, but this time I hadn’t made one (see: carpentry), so Sugar and I were pottering about during the exhausted wailings about how he just wanted to eat, which took the place of actually eating. I had my back turned when there was a tremendous bang, followed by screaming. Jackalope, flat on her back, on the floor behind her chair. Much holding. Much crying. Eventually, ice cream for everyone. When she had recovered enough to pause in her lamentations:
“I jump out chair.”
You don’t say.
Jackalope talks a lot now, by the way. Mostly English words, but also a lot of “CAMIMI,” a word of her own devising that the Bean says means “excuse me.” She also jumps off of a lot of things and can use her scooter (“ma goot”), inherited from The Bean, shockingly well. She’s 20 months old. Sometimes she throws her arms around me and says, ala Daniel Tiger, “I yike you just way y’are.” She gets away with a lot that way.
Okay. Time to get dressed. In closing, I leave you with this, from a friend’s new tumblr you should really check out: