mizarchivist

Somerville Open Studios/art/plans: total success. I enjoyed spending the weekend with mangosteen and lifecollage. I've now done enough craft fairs in the last several years to master the zen this time around. Historically I get quite frenetic about making new product. Not this time. I did maybe 8 pieces since Arisia, and that was fine. I was focused on being present and not on sales, so the fact I did quite well was made that much more. I very much hope this works out again next year. Most notably, I sold my last dragon tin. I have no more dragons! I must make more!! Any suggestions on color themes welcome. I may ignore them, but consider that survey open. Future plans for projects involve using peanut butter/mason jars. I've done a few here and there. They look cool and are a different sort of functionality to boxes. Also, we have an almost never-ending regeneration of empty jars.

Cope: (or lack thereof) Events like craft fairs steal whatever cope and energy I'd normally have. Today I feel like I've been beaten with sticks, hence me updating rather than trying to be a productive member of the staff. I'm also just low on cope. The spectre of no formal income for Jaime is a Thing of Awful. Not knowing when The Good Health Insurance (and access to my therapists) is a huge stress. (more on the progress side in a sec). The stress is causing everyone at home to be ragged around the edges and harder for me to forgive stupid shit, be present, ... you know. The usual. I am one fuck-up away from a crying jag kind of all the time.

Jaime/Job/Prospects:. Her interview mid last week went well at academic institution (my alma mater, btw). They are coming up hard against commencement and then summer clean up, so they'll need a Jaime asap. It's a 2nd shift job, which would present a new set of challenges, but steady, full time, permanent, unionized work. In the meantime, the tribe did the tribe thing and Jaime has about a dozen leads to follow up on for side work. I introduced Jaime to the tool, Trello, to keep track of the leads and then forced her to sit down today after lunch so I could walk through it with her to cement in the notion of using it.

Kid: His teacher thinks he should see a therapist. I'm looking into it via the pediatrician from the list available to use through new insurance. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't. I think he's just 4 and surrounded by stressed people, but also his daddy is a lady, and maybe he might want to process that with someone not his teacher and not his parent. Otherwise, we are doing OK? He and asciikitty had an awesome adventure that lasted most of yesterday and involved walking all the way back from lifecollage's house to our house. He and I played "store" the other night with his pretend food and cardboard pavers. [Dad loves to tell the story of me playing "bartender" when I was his age. When we moved into the house they're still in, there was a bar in the basement. I'd set up, offer to pour drinks, ask to hear about my customer's problems, and offer cliche aphorisms in response all the while wiping down the bar with a rag. Dad has NO idea where this came from. Kids are weird and awesome]

Travel/visits: My dad'll be here this weekend. Mom will be here in early June. Jaime/Kid/I will head to Ohio in early Sept to visit family. October I'll be back again for jedipartner1967's wedding (!!). All other vacation time is allotted to cover when the public school is closed this fall. There's a lot of one-off days and vacations, and no idea what Jaime's free time will be like, so have to assume it's me covering.... for now.

Cultural: Seeing Arcadia with Dad and ascii this weekend; Swan Lake with coworkers on the 13th; rollerskating on the 21st with sweetmmeblue and ahf (yes, I call that cultural); Brandi Carlile with caulay in early June; Doubleclicks in late June... It feels like a lot. I want to go see Verse and Vodka coming up, but I feel overwhelmed, dammit.

Work: not much? I'm sort of in a lull. One coworker's been out due to vacation then illness then workshop, so generally quieter than usual. My intern is done for the semester. I expect things will pick up soon.

The therapist encouraged me to tell New Insurance that I'm in crisis and cannot reasonably give up my therapist who's out of network right now. OK, worth a shot. (oh yeah, meant to do that)

She also made me talk to the family at the same time with my outside voice to explain the degree of Not OK I am right now. Which I did and the world didn't end.

We are going to use a feelings board (like in pre-school) to help everyone know where others are in any given day. Asciikitty's going to come up with the board part with feels. I made (clay) magnets for everyone (of course).

I have a hard time admitting that what I'm going through is a really big deal and extreme and super hard- I'm not literally on fire or a half a million other horrid things, so I should just .... (and here I trail off). But every time I see my therapist, who is a professional helper person and everything and her job is to be knowledgeable on such things, she points out this is a big deal, hard, and full of pretty intense, exhausting, and anxious-making things. So, it might go better to stop expecting myself to have the capacity of a not-stressed person... Like, don't be this guy:

TL:DR... working on it.

May. 2nd, 2016