Back in the Atmosphere...With Drops of Cat Litter in My Hair....

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Now that she's back from that soul vacation,

Tracing her way through the constellation,

She checks out Mozart while she does tae-bo,

Reminds me that there's room to grow...

("Drops of Jupiter", Train)

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Whenever I catch that idgit Little Baby sleeping in her dish I always holler at the top of my lungs: "Avast, me maties! Look alive, look alive, all those in the kitchen! There's pots and pans to clean! There's dishes to clean! There's grapes fallen behind the refrigerator which need retrieving! Thus, there will be NO sleeping in food bowls on my watch!"

It doesn't do any good but what the hell.

Today I have risen from my sick bed like an unkempt phoenix but I wish I was still in it. Wednesday I caught some kind of flu (not the Swine Flu--- most probably the The Idiot's Flu) and I was so deathly ill that I had to cancel my appointment with the mobile therapist that day.

But there was no way I was going to cancel my two appointments at the Center yesterday. I had both my 1:1 hour-long therapy appointment with Jack, my new therapist---and also it was the first day of our weekly 2-hour DBT group.

And let me tell you--- they consider the group a very serious part of your therapy. You actually have to sign a written contract pledging your dedication to the group for its year-long duration--a solid year, folks. You acknowledge on the contract that if you miss so many groups you are removed from the group until it begins again. (They totally don't play around if you're not serious about your need for therapy.) And also delineated on the contract is a place where you pledge your dedication to all aspects of the therapy which supports the group---things in addition to attendance at your your weekly 2-hour group, like your weekly hour-long 1:1 therapy with your therapist, the homework you're given, practicing the things they teach you which will help you bring your chaotic emotions into a healthy balance with your life's goals, and conducting yourself in a serious and respectful manner.

So nooooooo.....no way was I going to miss the first day of the group and my 1:1 with Jack.

So I dragged my sick self up out the bed and went to the group. You would have been embarrassed for me if you'd seen the state I was in when I arrived at the Center. Yeah, I was a horrible sight to behold. My hair was dirty and I wore it in two "bad hair day" braids--which were plaited unevenly and messy, with lots of stray strands of hair swirling about. I tried to put on makeup but ended up looking like I was one of those corpses that the mortician has to put makeup on to look good for the funeral. And I had on dirty blue jeans with my wildly colored spring rain boots (well it had been raining, okay? And who's to say it wasn't going to re-rain?), and a purple hoodie 8 sizes too big for me (I think it was Blaine's). And after those desperate beauty rituals, I grabbed my folder, homework, and went to group.

(Is it "corps" or "corpses" for the plural??....)

(And is "re-rain" a word??)

Anyway, everything that happened at the Center was great! It was so great that I can't even describe it!! Come to find out, it was the very exact thing I've been needing in therapy my whole life! And now I know why Fred referred me to it.

And now I know why he had that secret little smile on his face as I sat there in his office bawling my stupid eyes out when he told me I wouldn't be able to see him anymore since I would have a therapist in this new DBT therapy. The smile wasn't because he was unfeeling. It was because he knew my tears would soon be turned to smiles!

And so, these days when I'm driving home from the Center to my home, I gaze dreamily at the scenery of Overland Park and murmur: "Lowenstein...oh, Lowenstein..."

(Yes, yes--- of course I know that Fred isn't the psychiatrist "Lowenstein" in the Conroy book "The Prince of Tides" but it's how I remember Fred and what a super perfect therapist he was for me in the last two years. And Fred DID remind me, if you remember that blog post, that someday I would be able to see him again...)

"Lowenstein...oh, Lowenstein..."

Oh yeah--and a part of my therapy called "Mastery" is that I practice on a daily basis those things which make me feel happy and less depressed. For me that is my art---in my knitting, my jewelry making, sewing funky things, and drawing angels. Hooray!

So Blaine is turning the upstairs extra bedroom into a "studio" for me. Notice that it doesn't look like a studio yet. But it will. Oh, yeah---it will.

Since I don't yet have a jewelry table (we're getting the sewing machine table this weekend for the wall to the right---and I'm standing against the wall where I put my 42" flat screen TV, heh) I've got all my jewelry making supplies spread neatly out on the floor against the wall which will eventually be the jewelry table wall.

Below is the leopard necklace I'm making--but I still have to finish the last couple of inches and put a clasp on each end. (You can click on the picture to make it bigger.) I really love those two "leaf" beads.

Below is the progress of the snap beans. Soon they will get tall enough to start winding around the stakes.

Pay no attention to the idgity cat below---Little Baby was in one of her attention-seeking "posing" moods. (You can also click on her dang picture to better view her stupid pose but I recommend ignoring her...)

Here's the kitchen herbs and the two new tomato plants---all doing well. I'm going to transplant the kitchen herbs into larger pots that Blaine bought me for that purpose. Then the plants can get bigger.

But here below is the pitiful looking topsy turvy tomato plant. It had been doing well but now it looks bad, with a lot of yellow leaves and a just-in-general depressed mood. That is because the weather has been bad for it. It's been raining off and on for the last couple of weeks, and on the days it didn't rain it was totally cloudy with no sunlight.

Thus, the plant badly needs sunlight and much less water. But I sense a hopeless attitude coming from the roots trapped in that waterfilled dirt vault they're esconced in. So I've put this plant on the "suicide watch" list. I don't want it giving up just because the damn weather isn't perfect.

(Maybe I should start yelling "Avast, me maties!" at it ???)

And below is that little asshole, Little Baby, trying to find that last tiny little morsel of tuna fish. I say she needs to attend "Tunaholics Anonymous" meetings but she says that a cat wanting tuna fish is as natural as a fish needing water.

Little asshole...

(I wonder if the phrase "Avast, me idgits!" would work better than "Avast, me maties!" ?)

Must go for now---my case manager is due and I look the same as yesterday, but WORSE. Can you believe I slept on my hair braids from yesterday?---and that I haven't changed them AT ALL for his appointment except to try and slather everything down with hair spray? But don't worry---I did change clothes.

Oh well. What he sees is what he gets.

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