blogging from a minimally functioning brain

Snow update: The snow from last Saturday caused school closings through Weds, and today and tomorrow are 2-hour delays. As far as I can tell the snow has melted, so I'm confused. There is freezing rain tonight, and snow to rain this Saturday so perhaps it's an early precaution? I've pretty much stopped trying to figure it out.

Mostly because I'm currently trying to figure out what is wrong with my brain. See previous blog posts for my generally ungrounded walk through life, and my near-misses with mental illness. But the past couple days have even surprised me. For instance, it is not normal, even for me, to eat cereal in the late morning, get up from my chair and dump out the milk in the BATHROOM sink. I didn't realize I had done it until I turned on the faucet and I felt it was the wrong faucet. Still reeling from that crazy lapse in normal behavior, I then poured myself some grapefruit juice and put the carton back in the pantry instead of the refrigerator. That night I spent a full 20 minutes trying to assemble a food processor. No, not the whole food processor. One pole-like thing, and one blade. I could tell they fit together, I knew it should be obvious, but I just couldn't do it. I sliced potatoes by hand, and then my husband came home and showed me in 2 seconds how to do it. And it was obvious. Today I followed behind my supervisor's car to a client's house. It was a ten minute straight shot down the road, and I'd been to the house several times before. Easy. Driving, driving, driving... oh, where am I? My boss's car had turned right and I had not followed. I was a couples miles down the road. And also today I was at someone's house and one person in the room rocked on an armchair the whole hour. I couldn't look or I got vertigo. I felt like I was going to lose it. Don't even ask me to explain, I don't know why either.

I am hoping this blog doesn't turn into the dissolution of my mind, but there you go. I also got into a fender bender yesterday, for the first time ever. I was sitting at a red light and someone bumped me, so it definitely wasn't my fault, but somehow it just fits into the whole thing. Two days of fog and unthinking, and nonsense, and a growing resignation that it's going to be one mishap after another. I can't figure it out. I (for once!) have had really good sleep all week, have no emotional issues at the moment... my work is fun though mentally demanding. (that mentally demanding?) Not sure at what point I should be really concerned, or if I'm past that point. Maybe when I start trying to unlock other people's cars and houses thinking they are mine? Or call my cats the wrong names? On the bright side, perhaps this is all a prelude to a Matrix-like sci-fi revelation :) I'll keep you posted.

Winter Wonderland

My favorite part of moving to the South was leaving behind cold, grey, icy, slushy, freezing, depression-inducing, cloudy, sleeting, bone-chilling, nasty Boston winters. But I do have beautiful memories of magical snowfalls, where the city transforms into a silent, peaceful snow globe. Those moments are pretty much the only thing I miss about Boston from November through April. So when snow was forecast for this weekend I was happy that I was going to feel snow under my shoes again, once, briefly. Here I don't expect a real good Boston-type snowstorm - a couple feet of snow that falls on top of old snow, lingers for a week, lots of shoveling, maybe even a snow day if you're really lucky.

The frenzied hubbub about this snow forecast left me a bit confused. Because it wasn't a couple feet of snow, it was a quarter of that, maybe. And I felt bad for kids... it's going to snow once all season and on a weekend! No snow day even. Oh well. Friday night I had to run to the supermarket because I was all out of contact solution. Imagine my surprise when I looked at the egg section:



None left! Bread and milk were equally picked over. Why? Because local news had sent people out to stores with a list of necessary items for involuntary confinement. Saturday it did snow, and I stayed in my pajamas all day long and made a fire and watched movies. By the end of the day we got about 4 inches of snow, and some parts around us got about 6. We took a walk around our apartment today and kids were enjoying it. Here's a neighbor making a snowman....



When we came back the snowman seemed to have two extra heads on top... poor kids around here have such little snow they don't even know how to make a proper snowman. We saw another one that was just two giant blobs of snow with sticks coming out all over the top.



I've never seen a sled for sale, but people have them somehow. Perhaps they're generally used for the 'Winter Wonderland' festival each year, which brings in tons of fake snow. It was cancelled last week due to rain, and this week due to REAL snow. Imagine that.





Gabe and I enjoyed a nice walk in the woods....



Today I unthinkingly called a co-worker to arrange our 2 1/2 hour round trip car ride tomorrow, because where I come from four inches of snow two days later is not a blip on winter's radar. But things are different here. I've learned tomorrow IS a snow day. Roads are still unplowed, and apparently 1300 cars got in accidents on Saturday alone. I suppose everyone will sled, then come home for their bread, milk and eggs. Of all the things that are different here, reaction to snow is possibly the biggest culture shock so far.

easily our best wedding decision

was our choice of photographers. we're getting our pictures in, and seriously...unbelievable!! we've already reserved them for future children photo shoots :) they are wonderful people as well, and we're happy to let you know how to contact them if you need photographers. you can see more of their work here.

new job

I've been idling on the sidelines a bit at my new job - waiting for training, teams to be formed, etc. But recently I feel like I've been thrown in the deep end of the pool. It's only one family I'm really working with and the levels of dysfunction are mind-boggling. This work is so different than hospice. In hospice, your work ends when the patient dies. From the beginning you know the end. There's not such an emphasis on change. I rarely had impulses to 'help', or tell people what is best. You respect their journey... you simply witness, and that can be transformative.

In this job working with families, I witness, and I just seem to open Pandora's box...layers and layers and it just gets deeper and deeper. People look at me like I have answers, and I don't. Or if I think I do, that's a good sign I'm not being a good therapist. So I'm having trouble balancing that disposition with the situations that are just screaming out for some change. How do I witness, empower and work through these deep patterns in people's lives (which takes time by the way), when the environment most resembles a flaming cauldron of crisis?

These are my questions today. And it will balance out, and I'm glad for the questions because it means some learning is coming my way. But I had a dream about this family last night, which is a sign for me to watch my boundaries. Even more of a sign is the dream's content, which doesn't require a Freud to analyze: I was using their bathroom during a visit, and the house shook like a turbulent airplane (ever try to pee when that's happening?)... and then it got so windy that the door blew open and I'm there with my pants down feeling helpless and stupid.

domestic bliss > robin thicke creepiness

I may have been premature in declaring the end of my attraction to my husband due to that music video. Because the next day I looked in the kitchen and behold!



Most women would probably be concerned about the apron, but in my opinion that just shows commitment to the task at hand. That task was not only preparing pizza dough, but rearranging the ENTIRE kitchen. Because he couldn't find corn meal. The engineer decided our kitchen was not optimally organized to find corn meal efficiently and suddenly the cookbooks were in the living room, the cups and plates in the pantry, baking stuff where pans were, and a vacuum in the midst of it all. Of course, the whirlwind and vacuum remained three days later, and I had to clean it all up, but I'll give an A for initial effort. (Because of course when you cook 2% of the time the kitchen should be rearranged how you see fit. Ahem.)

Sigh. That came out a little more bitter than the actual amusement I feel about the whole situation. Now I am learning my new kitchen and getting ready to launch my belated new blog. Here's a big hint as to the theme....

1st anniversary

It's the first anniversary of my blog! I posted half the days of the past year, so that is one surprisingly consistent thing in my life. It's also been exactly one year since Gabriel proposed to me...awwwww. It also marks the official end of our sex life. Booo.... Last night started out innocently enough. Gabe was browsing through music videos and we were laughing at Right Said Fred remixes, I was marveling at the awesome cowboyness of George Strait, and we realized Weird Al still makes funny videos. But then it happened. He played Robin Thicke's "Sex Therapy". This video so creeped me out. I don't know if it's the overly sexual, unironic lyrics set to no melody, how he sings from between a woman's legs, or the mustache. Or how Gabe keeps singing it and trying to do his moves.

Play this video only if you're trying to practice celibacy!

more about "Robin Thicke - Sex Therapy", posted with vodpod

Fiddle, Banjo & Kazoo

If I ever adopt 3 dogs at one time, that would be their names. They're just so perfect, I can't believe 3 dogs haven't rung my doorbell tonight to claim them. I suppose it's because I have no doorbell.

Tonight we went to see a band that played those instruments and a dozen others at Blue Bayou in Hillsborough. Gabe's co-worker played piano. I'm not sure what you call the genre but it was great music. The percussion guy had a long beard and washboard - attached to the washboard were a cymbal, a bottle, a couple other things, and he played a drum with his foot. There was a little stage, and a little dance floor, and the first dancers were unexpected. A big pregnant lady and her husband, a bearded guy in sneakers and a hooded sweatshirt. They did the most graceful Cajun Waltz all by themselves while everyone watched. She was smiling and glowing the whole time, and you couldn't help but stare at her belly, this unseen third that was participating in the dance. It made me wonder where I was before I came into the world.

The music was great, but loud, and the crowd was big, and loud. Combined with the lights, my recent stressors and weird sleep, lack of yoga...I just felt so weird. Restless and exhausted at the same time, like I just wanted to leave my body. I had trouble processing all the sensory information, the music, the lights, the voices (I just know I'd get some diagnosis for that if bothered to try) and so told Gabe 'Hey, I think I have the beginnings of psychosis.' He said 'Alysa sometimes you say the most ridiculous things.' And certainly, I've never had psychotic episodes, and now that I'm in my 30s the risk of schizophrenia is pretty low. It wasn't exactly a valid statement. But I explained to him then, and now, I don't know why, am divulging it in a public forum, that sometimes I think I'm just as close as you can get to a mental illness without actually having one. Because I can really imagine losing touch with reality, because if you think about 'reality' too much it seems so ephemeral, and I think too much about nearly everything. I don't have the stable, in-the-body experience that I assume most have. I hardly go a day without injuring myself or falling. I have periods of brooding and inactivity that I like to think of as more 'dark nights of the soul' than depression, and periods of ambitious hyper-driven activity that I think of as 'being productive and creative' rather than mania. I am always amazed at how well I drive, because I'm fully aware of all the faculties that takes. But I've also developed panic attacks on bridges, and I'm just waiting for one day where I can't make it over - so far that day hasn't come.

Don't get me wrong, I'm very functional! I have strong relationships, did great in school, have had no problem holding a job. (And let's not forget that I'm a competent therapist, not sure how that all fits into the picture, either.) It's not so much I'm worried about having a mental illness, it's just that I'm so surprised I'm so "sane." So after I tell Gabe about my narrow escapes from mental disintegration on a day to day basis, he simply shrugs and says "I think that is just part of being human."

What an answer! I love its simplicity. So now I'm very curious. Is everyone secretly like me, but puts on a front of being solidly on earth? Is it all part of the human experience? Perhaps it's just a matter of good imagination, or reading too many novels. I've always thought of mental illness as a spectrum, instead of the black and white diagnoses we give in our modern culture. So maybe I've walked a couple steps down the spectrum along my travels. (I was also going to start a conversation about nature vs. nurture and mental illness but that will take too long. Has anyone else read "The Myth of Mental Illness?")

I'm curious about your thoughts on this if you'd like to comment. For now, I'm going to try to get a good night's sleep, empty my mind, and do some yoga tomorrow, before I start really floating away :)