A natural woman...

Resource room thoughts...Go!

Aretha....check.

You make me feel. You make me feel like a . na.tur.ral. wo.man. You make me feel..like. a nat.ur.ral. woooman.

Dam. What does it feel like to feel like that? A natural woman? In this social moment - I guess we would have to take it to Lady Gaga's Born this way....

with certainty, that's not what Aretha was talking about. Now I know not to fantasise about romance novels those aren't real, but this shit snuck up and got to me.

I don't know what it is but I want it!!

Is it when your S.O. runs his their head (Freudian slip - I meant hand...I guess I meant head - smh) hand up your thigh and tells you that you are it. Just it? I'm sure the right answer is something like feeling whole in yourself and sharing that with your preferred other but smack that. I've been single and that is a hollow pill to swallow - placebo effect....hate to say it ( I mean feel it).

paradoxically, i'm sure i've not had this natural woman thing. Not with a boyfriend (insert irony) I don't think. Maybe the dark one but that was so long ago and those memories are packed tight in a waterlogged cardboard file at the bottom of the basement. eh.

The bff said yesterday "I'm not in the best of shape but I look good naked" and I thought, "Wow, I haven't felt like that in a long time." I didn't even realize I hadn't felt steamy, sultry, sexy for while until that moment...

aw shit.

Ah well...

Thanks Blogger.


You must be prescient. You somehow knew what I needed today was a reminder of how little I impact the world.


You were thinking to yourself "that dam bekabug needs a kick in the pants!"... show her how many people read her blog...*snicker*


4, on a good day. :)


y'all are all who matter to me.


Giggling...

that's it.

love this room. those callalillies are the spot.

worldwhirlwind

I'm chilling in the resource room bumping Al Green's Here I am baby...

(come and take me..take me by the hand)

Loving, loving what I'm doing. I don't normally say I'm lucky, or even worse, blessed. Mainly because I feel the presence of good fortune rests on a shaky foundation and if you bring attention to it it will fall - egg to concrete. Don't test it. Don't look forward to it. Don't expect it. And be grateful when it shows up.

Yet right now?

Even through Everything that has happened. I feel snug as a bug in a rug in the bosom of God's goodwill. It may not last but it's here right now.

and seriously right now - i am truly exhausted. all week i have gone home and gone directly to sleep. do not pass go. do not watch the daily show (well, watch as teeth brushing is commencing). do not call the beau (who was busy anyway). ocho snuggle. star gate universe. sleep. oversleep. start over.

Last week I was surrounded by loved ones and etcs moving and such but my recovery time for upheaval in the hierarchy (see.below) is slloooowwwinnng down. Never mind I haven't been able to afford my bounty of fruits and veggies...Never mind all my meats are pumped full of crap because I can't afford the good stuff. At least I haven't gotten sick.

Social work moment:

Yeah, see the safety and physical needs? uhm yeah. fiddling with those sucks. Hey you watching out for these things yourself? Required assignment to keep from ending up on my couch....

Anyhoo - I'm home. Home in my cheap apt. and so much so home in my placement. I had an hour discussion with supervisor about how to get into this world in two years...the starting salary is sweeeeeet. I love working with these kids. Maybe I won't like all kids. But these kids? They make me feel like I'm supposed to be here working with them. I've had some set backs with kiddies shutting down and withdrawing. I've had some amazing successes as well with some of the most difficult kids showing remarkable improvement (and honestly, who knows rebellious smartalecky kids who read too much better than me?). It is truly a joy - and isn't this why I went through all of the drama for the last two years?

I suppose so.

(msw cousin paving the way for the mswdr. movement - get ready!)

Why does my house look like this??? Sad...

...black women stand up...

My supervisor rocks!

She is sadly out with a mysterious disease. We know it is serious but not life threatoning...I don't think I have ever been so curious about what is going on with someones health. I suppose she is my bff in my head and I am really worried...

So I am sitting at her desk today. I am totally uncomfortable sitting here as the children file pass and do the double takes when they see the black girl sitting here instead of the blond women they adore. It can't be helpped, I need the space...And to quote the good rev. Rice..."They will get over it" (Does anyone else think he overuses that phrase?)

The Point:
As I was sitting here, I noticed that she has the quote compulsion like I do. Just quotes stuck everywhere, most of them deep but not striking to me personally, a fair amount of them are surprisingly Xstian centered...(a secret Xstian...the plot thickens....)  This hit one deep.

To live content with small means;
to seek elegance rather than luxury;
and refinement rather than fashion;
to be worthy, not respectable; and wealthy, not rich;
to study hard. think quietly, talk gently, act frankly;
to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with an open heart;
to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, hurry never;
in a word, to let spiritual, unbidden and unconscious
grow up through the common.
This is to be my symphony
 William Ellery Channing.

I love how smooth and silkily this life is presented. It reminds of me rainy days on a window seats and tweed jackets and the expensive version of aerosole shoes.  Even in its simplicity it seems privileged, and comfortable, and right now? Completely unattainable. It's a picture that I will look at when my river is frothy with stress, when my self control is hidden from sight and when my bank account is empty of money and I "think quietly" of becoming a stripper. One day I could be that woman.  One day I will have the patience and time and money to listen to babes and sages...right now it is just a dream I'm treading towards.

This is Not a teaching moment...

There was a point today that was glorious only in its ability to shatter my calm. It was definitely after talking to my dentist. He says very matter of factually, destroying my entire afternoon, "it sounds like you need a root canal".

Really?

I'm not going to bother to ask how much. The best part was all the useless advice I got...the priceless one was my dad asking me to go check my insurance from my old job. Would you just shut up and stop talking?

I'm so over it.

Self Advocacy and shit...

Finding our footing...that's the theme of this semester. I have been completely overwhelmed with the transition that I have gone through in the last 3 months. So I am in mid fall on a muddy hill.

To use a well trodden phrase, I am holding on with my fingernails and afraid to look down. I really feel that I am in the space where wiley has walked off the cliff and hasn't looked down yet. It's that moment when you anticipate the fall even though it hasn't started yet - making it all the more scary in its inflation by your imagination. I thought that I was just experiencing the regular transition on many levels; feeling overwhelmed with incredible life stressors and changes, feeling mishandled by the administration of the school, feeling out of wack with my field placement and the level of responsibility, and feeling over whelmed at the weight of fatigue on my ability to do what is an incredibly boring but manageable amount of reading.

Technically, I should feel ecstatic. Having fulfilled my main goal of receiving a Honors from my hardest professor - but smooth high of that incredible triumph was soon squashed by mounting concerns in every other part of my life.

That being said, I had my field advisory meeting today. Much to my surprise apparently I am in a crisis stage at my site. I am the only one with my case load level. I am the only one with readings to do at this level. I am the only one who has to do three process recordings, plus session notes on top of the regular work assigned for class. I could go on. Let's just say that there are many people who have yet to get their hands on a client, much do anything besides run recess and do paperwork. Oh.

Oh.

I am not used to people looking at me with pity eyes but that is what happened today. I found it to be extremely amusing, in a terrifying way that the professor goes, as I walk out the door, you need to email me for a meeting immediately. Apparently no one else has two ACS cases on her caseload. Oh 

I realized today the effect of stress for me is that I can't handle tiny stressors. Like the inability to adjust when the schools wifi is not working when I am trying to get my readings printed out. My brain turned to mush and oddly enough my thighs started to feel huge.  I was like, waitawhatthehell? Now I decide to feel fat? It's like all the insecurities that always float around, waiting for their moment, suddenly gain strength and infiltrate your mind. I feel fat and ugly. I feel sad and anxious. (Can you tell I have been working with folks around naming, recognizing, and expressing their emotions?)

I know one thing for certain. I love my job. I love it. Sometimes in between sessions I walk down the hall and actually feel the sun in my chest. The rays ,not the death dealing radiation. Even if I haven't accomplished anything in session, just the interaction and contact with these children light up my day - even if I am being called a caustic agent of the principal. :)

So I feel terrible. I feel triumphant. I feel anxious.

and I'm so over feeling. Really.

Human skin wallets?! Where can I get one? (at the mutters museum)

That is all I have from the Mutters Museum of Philadelphia. I have a deep sense that there is a clever parallel between my expectations of my trip to the Mutters museum and what actually happen and the turmoil and upheaval in my life right now -  but I haven't been able to put my finger on quite yet, it keeps slipping right out of my line of sight and, frankly, I'm not looking quite that hard...

Like most people, I LOVE museum gifts shops. LOVE. I go to museum for the information and the art yada yada but my hand sweats in anticipation as soon as I know that next corner is going to smoothly transition me from learning to BUYING. I am not sure why everyone loves a gift shop...but for me its the perfect combination of everything I love to do - learn random shit and buy random shit.

I have never in my life - walked into a museum shop and looked for the exit first, until today. Having just walked away from a glass case that, all the way on the bottom shelf, right under an old tome old illustrations of the inside of women muscular formation...was an abortion pick. And next to that were the forceps with a battering thingy to piece the babies skull.

Pause. Really?

I have always wanted to go to the Mutters museum since I had heard about it in high school. It is about ten blocks from my high school and it was fuel to my fire of medical school. Uh huh - talk about not updating your desires....Since then I'm a completely different person... a person who is uncomfortable with seeing skinned baby bodies and what untreated syphilis does to your skull (it eats it). I am uncomfortable looking at what a bullet does exactly to a brain or seeing the skeleton of a 18th century midget prostitute and the skull of her tiny aborted baby looks like. (They couldn't get the baby out because of the deformity of her pelvis. So they crushed the head and tried to pull it out, when that didn't work they cut it out of her stomach (I'm not sure we would call it a Caesarean section) and then she died three days later from the wound). Love life.

To be honest - I was partially fascinated. Even the arm that had small poxs on it was amazing. I always wondered if it looks like chicken pox (it.does.not. - you have that and you know you are going to die -soon.). But when we got to the basement (I can't fathom why they couldn't put it on the second floor) my stomach got a little queasy. My mind was still there but my body was oooover it. I knew I was uncomfortable but I pushed along because I didn't want to miss anything - and also didn't want to see everything. but I looked anyway...knowing it might have some negative effects on my tummy.

I turned to Adiva and said in a particular voice - eh, I think I'm nauseous. She confirmed her nausea too and with relief I didn't hide we swiftly headed nodded to the swollen colon and marched toward the light. The sunlight on my skin signaled freedom but I dragged along my wonders at what I had seen asI calculated the distance to the closes bar (my moms house, no comment).

For example, who were these people? Were any of them black? How did they get here? Did these folks know what was being done to their bodies? Or to their children's bodies? Were their spirits here, floating around them protectively? or just languishing?  Were they restful or angry? Were they noting my presence to come get me later????

Listen. It was a once in a life time experience. And while I understand that they aren't closing - I will never go back - you can bet your bottom dollar on that Annie.  So uhm, make sure you update your bucket list frequently - it can't be a good thing to go doing things you wanted to do 15 years ago without checking to make sure you still want to do it. Otherwise - you might end up face to face with a dead dried baby tied up on strings.

I mean really. What's wrong with you? ugh.

(Glad I went) chuckle.