No Real Answers

Well, my bachelor days come to an end tonight when Dave gets home from New York. I had my last burger meal for awhile today (a green chile and cheese Itsa burger from Blake's for my lunch). Tomorrow we go back to eating relatively healthy and mostly vegetarian. (SIGH!)

I slept in quite late today (after being up most of the night) and then showered and ran out to do some errands. We had nothing for Dave's lunches for the rest of the week--and nothing really for dinners--so I went up to Whole Foods and picked up some posole fixings and bread and fruit. Then I stopped for my final burger meal. Then I came home and did a handful of chores (toilet scrubbing, trash removal, fridge cleaning) that I've let slide even more so than usual over the past few days that Dave's been gone.

A few nights ago, I was re-for-the-millionth-time-reading Little Women and I got to the part where they try out their "all play and no work" experiment. Of course, it all goes to hell, up to and including (spoiler alert!) Beth's canary starving to death because no one thinks to feed it. In some ways, that was my life while Dave was out of town this last time. Of course I didn't starve any animals to death, but the garden was looking mighty wilted when I went out this afternoon to give it a nice long drink. (I did water, but only cursorily, yesterday and the day before, and in these 100+ degree days the plants weren't having it.) And I'm ready to pull the shades down to avoid dusting the way Jo did.

I have yet to tackle the dishes, a job that is not going to be pleasant.

Exercise

After we quit pilates, I let the exercise slide and I have been starting to really feel a difference. We are planning on joining the gym and working out with a personal trainer now that Judi is back from her trip, but that won't happen until this weekend at the earliest. So I started doing walking workouts on youtube. They're actually quite fun, some of them, and they can be done in a very small space (which the casita qualifies as). They're called "walking workouts," but they incorporate more movement than just walking in place, so they're more like super low-impact aerobics.

I'm enjoying it.

Therapy-a-go-go

After thinking about it last night, I contacted my therapist and let her know that I wasn't going to be coming back. Now, I need to find another therapist. I'm thinking that I want someone with a little more experience dealing with the kinds of issues I'm bringing into therapy--and someone who is less interested in small talk. Finding a good therapist is not easy. I would say that the majority of the therapists I've been to have been not very good, actually. Which probably makes people wonder why I would keep going to therapy. One reason is that even a mediocre therapist is sometimes helpful in some small ways. The other reason is that having some structure built into my life where I give time and energy over to my mental state is also helpful, even if the actual therapist is not good.

I'm willing to admit that some of my problems run deep enough that it's very likely that some of them will never be rooted out and dealt with in a satisfactory way, in a way that leaves me "fixed." In those instances, there is no such thing as "fixed." In those instances, it's a game against time and there is no way to win against the clock.

And too, maybe it's that I don't want to hear that there are no real answers. I don't want to accept that, so I keep looking for therapists.