therapy

So much in my mind while driving, then so little when I get home. Actually, lots when I get home but it’s all action items: laundry, lunch, email, texts (occasionally), real mail, bills. Some of it involves sitting down at the computer and the blog site is always there, waiting.

This morning I went to see a psychiatrist. My regular therapist, a psychologist, is moving and closing her practice here in the Bay Area. A couple of weeks ago, when I was making appointments, I was in a downward trend so I thought I should at least look into the idea of medication for depression, thus the psychiatrist.

By the time today actually rolled around I was feeling pretty decent. I worked one night, Tuesday, since last weekend and I’ve gotten a lot done that’s been hanging fire for a while. Not only my laundry and groceries, but my taxes and a visit to Mom & Dad’s.

So I told the psychiatrist my sad story and cried a little, remembering, but I didn’t feel hopeless, panicked, suicidal, or any of those other symptoms she was looking for. My only major symptom now is I’m still having trouble sleeping. She said I could start a low dose of a different medication from what I had (some years) before but I could see her heart wasn’t in it. Neither was mine, so we parted amiably with a promise to be in touch if anything changed.

I have one more session with Dr Perry, with another one scheduled with another therapist – only an MFT this time – next week. It’s good to talk with someone but I believe equally important is the usual stay healthy rules: eat well, get enough sleep, exercise. I’m renewing my commitment to reduce my work hours and do more for myself. Stay tuned.

Women’s March

I don’t know what it was officially called. I heard it a bunch of times but it just didn’t stick with me. It was the afternoon one. Evidently the morning one was anti-abortion. They both started and stopped in the same places. Anyway, Rose and Jane and Julian and Julian’s girlfriend Lisa went. All the demonstrations going on this weekend around the inaugural and I’ve been in SoundBox. I’ll try to do a post about that but for now I’ll just post (lightly edited) my impressions from last night.

left home at 5:15 for a 7 pm call. Daly City BART. The train was from Millbrae and packed – I was lucky to get a spot by the door. Being at the door at Civic Center, I didn’t wait around to see how many got off, but there were lines of people waiting to get on a la 5pm on a weekday. Many people coming down the stairs and many, many people in the ‘foyer’ lined up to buy tickets. Really, folks? Did you think you’d never come back?

Up the stairs to the street, lots of people coming down, many with umbrellas as it was raining lightly. Up on the sidewalk, tho’, it was jammed. Just like the BART car shoulder to shoulder but slowly moving towards downtown. I got to the edge and went up Hyde to the other side of the library. Hardly anyone was there. A crew was taking down the sound system for a stage there. I didn’t go over.

By the time I got to the front of the library, Grove was practically deserted. I guess I had seen the tail end of the parade. It had a really good vibe tho’. I did some musing on people and their hopes and dreams and their tendency to fuck them up. [By the time I was writing this last paragraph inside at S/B, people were talking to me about work and this doesn’t seem very coherent. It’s a theme I hope to expand on someday.]

7 pm time to start work

work weekend

Jeremy’s email has me all excited about the work weekend in May. Not about the work itself but about the idea of being with a lot of people who cared about Zach. I guess I’m seeing it as another celebration of his life, but with hopefully less sadness and more ‘celebration’.

My hope is to go to Camp Greenville for the weekend then top it off with a quick visit to Noah’s family in Cincinnati. Everything is tentative right now so watch this space!

power outage

Last night I picked up a Papa Murphy’s pizza on my way home. It was about half way through cooking when the power went out. Unlike the last few days when I’ve lost power for an eyeblink – just enough to require the electronic clocks to be reset – this time the power stayed off.

After about 10 minutes, I took the pizza out of the cooling oven and ate it. It wasn’t really done but it was good enough, particularly considering the alternatives. The pizza and the bottle of wine I cracked were to celebrate some news that I am not yet allowed to tell.

I had flashlights but no candles. Rose, of course, had some candles and brought some over so we sat in their flickering light and drank wine. When the bottle was finished and the lights hadn’t come back on, she went home and I went to bed.

The weird thing about last night’s power outage was that some of the lights were still lit. Any incandescent on a switch I tried came on dimly, about 30%. My one incandescent light that is on a resistance dimmer would not come on at all. A night light that is LED glowed at about 30%. The apartment out my back window (where the big TV is) had outside lights that were flashing as if they were trying to strike but couldn’t. The TV was dark. I thought about measuring the actual voltage but didn’t. I didn’t care that much!

I did go around and unplug the computer so the weird voltage wouldn’t damage it. I threw the breakers to the oven in case it came back on with the power and I was sleeping.

PG&E actually called my phone to tell me my power was out and that only 113 homes were affected. Up the hill out the kitchen window all the houses had lights on. I guess I am kind of curious as to why such a small number of buildings were affected and what was going on with the leakage. Maybe with all the solar panels and other local power sources these days there was some voltage trickling around backwards. There are supposed to be interlocks to prevent that but perhaps some are wildcatted in without interlocks. Be careful out there, PG&E guys!

It’s all good now. The sun is shining and the breeze is moderate. I hope to be given permission to share my good news soon.

one year

It’s way past the real anniversaries, but I was thinking the other day about how different my table looks now compared to a year ago. Then it was covered with sympathy cards. Now it has Christmas cards.

Most recognize my loss but they are essentially a message of joy rather than sadness. That’s a big improvement. Thank you everyone for the cards and support! I hope you are all reading this! I don’t think I’ll be sending out any kid of newsy Christmas letters for a while. Here is where you get my news.

Speaking of news, I saw Cubby last night at the union meeting. Cubby lost his wife last Easter Sunday morning and went into a tailspin for several months. He couldn’t work but now he’s back and looks good. We had a good long hug. Solidarity.

backpacks

I carry a backpack almost every day. I guess it’s like a woman’s purse. It’s got a lot of stuff in it that I might need: energy bars, ibuprofen, toothpicks, pens, Kleenexes, notepads . . . lots of odds and ends. Each day I add stuff to it that I might need that particular day: tools, lunch, a water bottle, whatever. The one I’ve been using I got at Big 5 about 5 years ago for $12.

Honest, $12 for a new backpack. It’s a little on the small side. That was a feature that I wanted. I had had the experience of having a larger backpack and putting so much stuff into it that I could hardly lift it. Many times during the previous 5 years I had to carry something outside of it or not take it at all.

That was all good, but it was wearing out. Meanwhile, one of the items I inherited from Zach was a nice North Face backpack. It’s really nice – better in almost every way. But I didn’t want to use it.

I had two of Zach’s jackets. I wore them a few times but eventually I gave them to Jeremy, who may or may not keep them. His computer I had for a while and gave to Jeremy. I still have his iPad but I don’t use it. Come to think of it I still have his phone. I still think I’ll get all of his texts off of it someday. I have one of his belts that I use now and then.

I have his dressers – which were mine originally. I’ll keep those. I’ll keep Hobbes. A few other small mementos. And I guess I’ll keep his backpack. I put it into service today. I dumped out everything from mine and put it into Zach’s. As I was apportioning my junk, I found one of Zach’s pens in the backpack. That’ll stay right there. Then later I found another one in a different pocket. That’ll stay there too. But I’ll use the backpack. It should be good for 10 or 15 years at least. My Z . . .

neighbors

I’ve noticed this since last fall when it started getting darker earlier. When I look out my bedroom window, as I usually do when I raise the shade in the morning or drop it in the evening, I don’t see the ocean in the distance so much as the flickering glow of my neighbor’s TV set. Directly in the line of sight with the tiny piece of ocean I can see is a rather tall and narrow window set into the lower part of the next door apartment about a hundred feet away. For six years I put my shade down and up and never gave much thought to what was through that window – it’s really not big enough to see anything and I’m not interested in my neighbor’s furnishings.

But now I can see this huge TV set flickering away at all hours of the day and night. Really. I’ve been up (for various reasons) at 2, 3, 4 in the morning; I think there was one time in the last three or four months the window was dark. I haven’t made a study of it and it’s harder to see in the daylight so I won’t try to attest to how much it’s on during the day but it’s on a lot.

I’m actually a little curious. Does this guy ever sleep? Does he leave it on when he’s not there?

Not enough to go over and ask him, though. Just enough to post this little rant.

ADDENDUM: Today, not even 24 hours after I wrote this, I came home about 5:45 in the evening. It was nearly full dark. I went into my room to drop the shade and . . . the TV was off!

Maybe he wasn’t home from work yet.

Actually, now as I write this, it’s 8 pm and it’s still off. I hope he’s alright.

(OK, not another word.)

feelings

There’s a James Taylor lyric that’s been running around my brain lately. I keep hearing it because it describes my feeling pretty well. It’s from his song Shed a Little Light.

There is a feeling like the clenching of a fist
There is a hunger in the center of the chest
There is a passage through the darkness and the mist
And though the body sleeps the heart will never rest

The last week or so I’ve had this feeling. To me, it’s a prelude to having a good cry but it hasn’t happened yet. As in times before, the triggers are quirky and impossible to predict. Yesterday I was watching a football game and someone got seriously hurt. How seriously? They actually broke away for two commercials interspersed with showing the poor guy lying motionless on the field surrounded by anxious medical people. For some reason I got all choked up watching that.

But it still didn’t trigger the good cry. I guess it’ll come one of these days.

2016

OK, I’m going to vent here. All these people – most of them friends of mine – who moan about how 2016 is a terrible year because Carrie Fischer died, or George Michael, or Prince, or some other celebrity or pop star that I forget right now: get a grip!!

That is all.

puzzlement revisited

I made reference to my original ‘puzzlement‘ post today in an email and I thought of a comparison. Saying ‘Zach is dead’ is like saying ‘the Pacific Ocean is huge.’ Intellectually you know it is true but you really can’t grasp the real size of it.

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Category Archives: Life as we know it