Just a quick bookmark here so no one thinks I fell off the face of the planet.

Most of my Minneapolis trip was great, and I got to enjoy a lot of sun. It perhaps would have behooved me to ask how warm it had been before the week I arrived before I dove headfirst into Lake Calhoun, but I survived that error all the same. The Baby Liam is well into his two’s for the good and the ill, and began calling me “Daddy Heather” for some reason, which I have no doubt his father will not think is the best thing ever. I had a migraine for several of the days there and as a result, learned a bit late in the game that the person to send for coffee for you is not your friend who a) doesn’t drink it herself and b) has a degenerative eye disease. Only many days of growing pain later did I discover I’d been drinking decaf.

It was great seeing people, and really good to have some real downtime. I didn’t get to see everyone I wanted to, but that was mainly because I did actually manage to truly vacate a lot of the time there, a nearly impossible task for me.

I, however, came home to considerable and very unexpected catastrophe, and need to find the right way to discuss how I’m feeling in writing without actually disclosing any actual details of the situation. That situation has me a bit of a wreck, though, so I’m not quite there yet and need a couple of days before I can write about it, my trip, or anything else.

I now return you to your regular programming. More later.

posted in Heather Corinna, apropos of nothing, wah | permalink | comments (2) »

I finked out on the photoblogging, primarily because since I said I’d do it, I haven’t had a minute to take a single new photo. I haven’t even had time to edit more of my backlog then 50 photos or so. Mind, I would have finked on writing, too, so either way, no one would have seen or heard much of me.

I’m having a tough time managing my schedule these days, and getting all the work in I need to, which has left me pretty much without any semblance of a personal life. I did know this was probably going to happen, and did what I could to prepare for it, but I wasn’t expecting it to be this tough. Now and then, I forget I’m not 19 anymore. Back in the day, working so much was easier. When I began college, I did work-study several days a week as well as teaching special ed Friday nights, all day Saturday and most of Sunday, and carried 27 credit hours, which at the school I attended — our classes were small and discussion-based, not lecture — meant a huge pile of texts to read on top of showing up for class. I was crazy busy, for sure, but somehow I also had time and energy a few times a week to chill out, get laid, have lunch or dinner with friends, throw parties, take walks, what have you. I remember feeling tired, but both energized and relaxed enough most of the time.

My weekly schedule right now is looking something like this:

Monday/Thursday/sometimes one more day: Up at 5, an hour or so of Scarleteen work/checking, then to the showers, then to the clinic. Out of there anywhere from 4 - 5:30, usually home anywhere from 6 - 7:30, with often at least one leg of the three-bus, two-hour commute tango. When I get home, I’ll tend to the pets, assemble some sort of meal, zone out for an hour or so with a DVD or a book, try to maybe make one call or email to a friend or family member, chat with Mark, but by then — and sometimes before plenty of that — I’m usually face down on some sort of soft surface pretty early. After clinic days, I cannot counsel at Scarleteen: I’m just too wiped to handle more of anyone’s crisis.

Tuesday/Wednesday/sometimes only one of those days: Wake up around 7, an hour or two of Scarleteen work/checking, then a solid hour or two where I sit in the bath or stare at a wall, feeling overwhelmed before trying to fit in some housework then getting back to Scarleteen, email, all the other home-work stuff. These are the days I’ll also do in-person or phone meetings, run errands, squeeze in some kind of exercise, call my Dad (there is no such thing as a phone conversation with him that lasts less than two hours: he’s very socially isolated and often in a bad emotional space), deal with finances, etc. At least one of these nights Mark and I will usually get some time together, even if it’s just snuggling while watching a movie.

Friday/Saturday/Sunday: Solid Scarleteen. The pattern lately has been that I wake up at 7 or 8, start working and just work into the night until I drop. Last weekend I didn’t stop working any of those three nights until 10 or so.

Around twice a month, I can swing most of a real day off, but I usually have to prepare for those days in advance.

I’ve realized one critical difference between now and almost 20 years ago is the amount of sleep I need. Plenty of times, three or four hours a night, even if that went on for weeks, was just fine in college, and somehow I was still pretty darn alert all day. Now, even one night of only three or four hours of sleep fucks me up for a week. On days I have to go into the clinic, anything less than seven hours is just not an option.

Another biggie is that I cannot be halfway-there for any of my gigs. In other words, I can’t just float through days sometimes, present enough to be counted, but not much more than that. That was me often enough in college: I’m one of those folks who had to push a bit to get an A, but I could get a B half-asleep. At the clinic, I have to be seriously on, every minute of that day. Working at home, I am multi-tasking like a spastic chicken: since I started the new gig, I have less time in a week to do the website work, but unfortunately, the amount of work I have to do with Scarleteen has increased. Less time + more work = not good. With either job, when I’m counseling someone, they need my complete attention and investment: how tired or overwhelmed I am isn’t something I can talk about or let them see. And looking at our traffic patterns, while summer is always a bear with Scarleteen, we’ve got higher traffic so far this year at this point than we have for a few years, so chances are good it may be our busiest summer ever, with less help than usual, besides. Can I get an ugh?

Obviously, another big difference is the gravity of what I’m doing, and how in the spotlight I do some of it (and, when not at clinic, how much of it I have to do almost single-handedly). With Scarleteen, I’ll admit that it’s gotten to the point where I deeply resent the expectations people have of me sometimes, because they seem so much higher than anyone having them has for themselves. All my work at this point involves such heavy stuff so much of the time, and so much tending to the toughest parts of people’s lives, and that means that I’m more emotionally wiped from work, more stressed about being sure I’m doing it to the best of my ability. When I have a wee bit of time to myself, most of my energy goes into just refueling my physical and emotional reserves, which tend to be way past empty.

What’s had to be shelved for now? My visual art, as well as any possible photo clients. (Plus, my replacement camera I got a year ago is now currently and inexplicably broken: that leaves me with two broken cameras in need of repair, but with other bills that need to be paid before I can fix either.) Giving up one of those home-work days for photo work at this point means that the next day I work, the workload will be even more unmanageable than it is otherwise. Too, with how my schedule is, I probably couldn’t deliver edited photos to a client for at least six months, if not a year: as it is I have a good ten different sets of photos I need to edit, and thank christ those aren’t paying clients. The All Girl Army, as well as the idea I have had for reprising Scarlet Letters.  My bike: I got out once last month, and that is SO not enough. Just ask my ass. Seeing friends. My social circle here is still fairly small, but even with that, months will go by before I’m able to see people I miss; weeks before I can even chat with a long-distance friend on the phone. Often, friends have to come over to see me, and even then, I’ll be doing some work while they hang out, or I’ll feel like such a basket case that I spend the whole time we’re hanging out trying not to endlessly vent. I also used to be that friend you could call in a crisis, or when you needed to cry, and I’m not that friend at all lately. My brain has also been largely MIA when I’m not working: my level of spacing things out lately has been humiliating. I don’t put a lot of pressure on myself when it comes to appearances, nor would I say vanity is ever a big issue for me, but even by my own relaxed standards, I look like shit these days, too. It’s been a bumper-crop of wrinkles and greys over the last few months: I feel like I age in double-time lately.

I’m not sure what the solution is. In all honesty, I think it just has to be like this for a little while, and maybe I’ll adjust. I need/am committed to do both jobs, and truth be told, there still aren’t enough hours in the day to do all the work and not enough payment for it to really get me up to snuff financially. I’m hoping for some sort of miracle this year per funds with Scarleteen like I have been for the last couple years, not only the kind that can pay the basic bills and some reasonable salary for me, but the kind that could result in me being able to hire someone else qualified to take care of it even just ten hours a week or so. Alas, not sure what to do to make that happen that I haven’t tried already: we’re looking at a possible in-person fundraiser in the fall, but that’s a damn long time from now. But once or twice, decent funding has shown up, so it’s not like small miracles haven’t happened before and can’t happen again.

(And yes, I have considered just saying goodbye to it — people keep asking me that, so I’m answering — but via my one grant, I am committed to do it for another couple years, and too, given all the traffic I just can’t accept that there is no way to get it solvent, and make it manageable per my workload. As well, I’m a longtime activist, reared to be one: I know the drill. There are often very long periods of time where the work is a beast, where pay is infrequent to nonexistent, but when you’re making forward movement in terms of the goals of your activism, you do what you can to just keep pushing through. And until there really was something else like Scarleteen when it comes to its inclusivity, particular approach and real one-on-one service, I know that I would not feel okay leaving it. Too, my current option if I did that would be to shift to full-time at the clinic, which is not something I think I could handle at this point emotionally or practically — even that much of a commute every day would total me. Plus, I don’t think they even have that many hours for me available.)

Some of this stuff is nothing new, and also a bit of a family legacy on my Mom’s side. I was telling Mark the other day that I have this copy of a county newspaper clipping about my mother’s grandfather. The small headline simply reads: Man Dies After Stint of Shucking Corn. The story is that my great-grandfather, in his seventies, was at a farm gig that day where the job was to clean a truckful of corn. About halfway through, he had said to a couple people that he wasn’t feeling so well, but so help him gawd, he was going to finish the job at hand. When he finished the very last ear, he dropped dead.

We don’t tend to die gracefully on either side of my family, but going belly-up in a truck of corn and having it be the basis of your eulogy sets records even for us.

I have a love-hate relationship with this workaholic tradition in my family. I hate it because it has more to do with being dirt poor despite working nonstop than anything else. It’s always so irksome that so many of us just can’t seem to be anything but overworked and still barely getting by, though my version of poor at this point is obviously a far cry from my great-grandfathers: I’m typing this on a laptop, after all, I did eat decently last night, and the shirt I’m wearing at the moment has not been repaired 385 times. Too, with all of us, I think — and some of that is just immigrant inheritance — we feel like we are only redeemed or of any use to anyone by working ourselves to death. I love it because part of me is a closet protestant: I do value hard work, especially when it’s about helping your family or helping others through your work. I value dedication, and leisure/slacker culture, and how entitled so many people feel to work so little or do such unchallenging work, does gross me out. I do think work has a spiritual value for me, and I do like being busy and productive. I don’t feel like myself when I’m not working hard.

I know, I’m whining. I have been a bit down lately in the moments I don’t have to be on or taking care of people: the pressures just feel so immense at the moment, and I don’t always feel up to them. I was doing a bit of life-goaling in my head the other day: some of it may seem pathetic or silly to someone who isn’t me. Like, before I turn 40, I want to just once have an actual sofa to sit on, not a futon, and preferably have it only have butt-grooves from my own bottom, and I’d also really like to have health insurance and to be able to get my teeth cleaned twice a year. Before I turn 50, I’d love to have a house or even just a little bit of land of my own. Before I turn 60, I would like just once to only have to work those elusive 40-hour-weeks I keep hearing so much about. Before I die, I want to be able to take a full month off of everything that is everything, either by going somewhere I’ve never been, working in a garden that I know I can keep, finding the last vineyard where I can help make wine by dancing in a vat of grapes, building something with my hands or by being able to paint a wall mural, every day for that month. And I’d really like to be the first person in my mother’s family that gets to die while sitting down in something resembling a relaxed, off-duty, position. I’m almost positive it won’t happen with my mother or her eight siblings — my mother is never off work and one of her brothers, at 55, still moves furniture full-time — so the next person in line (I’m the eldest of a gazillion cousins) for that is probably me.

If I really want to make any of that happen, something has got to give at some point, man. I just, for the life of me, don’t know what.

(I’m closing comments for this one because comments just always feel weird when you’re whining.)

posted in Heather Corinna, workworkwork, wah | permalink |

I’ve decided that for the next month or so — however long I need — that when I journal here, I’m going to photojournal rather than communicate with words and text. Even that’s tough, posting a photo or a piece of artwork and not saying anything about it. I tell you, you’d think that my odd little mind is convinced that if I shut my yap, the world will stop turning.

One of the challenges I’ve always had when it comes to being creative in more than one medium is striking a balance. It’s fine that I have phases where one medium is the primary one, and the others more secondary. That’s not the issue, or at least not the issue when those phases are days, weeks, maybe even a couple months. But sometimes, any one way of communicating, of creating basically monopolizes all others. That one way will rudely shove every other medium into the closet and lock the door, only letting them out when they whine and say pretty, pretty please, and sometimes, refuses to open it at all, no matter the plaintive wailing, which gets softer and softer as time goes by until one can barely hear them at all.

I feel utterly steamrolled by my own words lately, both in writing and in talking. Not only is that not leaving room for anything else, they’ve been so fever pitch that managing them in the way any writer needs to has become far more difficult than it should be.

I’m missing visual imagery these days. While images certainly have things to say, they’re communicated in a silence which I find meditative. It helps me listen to the world with my eyes and my more intuitive senses. (That sounded both completely convoluted and cheeseball, but so be it.) I’m more observant of everything around me when I do photography or other visual artwork, and that’s an important meditation for someone who is a far better talker than she is a listener. (Being hyper and a bit ADD also is a factor in this.) Words tend to energize me and work me up, whereas the visual — and music, too — calms, stills, quiets and centers.

I may even just write for myself a bit in the interim. It’s been a long while since I’ve done that, sparing my to-do lists, which while they have a flavor all their own, and are occasionally amusing, aren’t exactly the deepest form of personal expression.

Of course, I can’t get away with not writing anything, nor without conversing, simply because for two out of three jobs, I need to do those things. But I think that even limiting it in one avenue will be the good news.

So, you get a piece from a full set I put up today, of Melissa (Happy birthday, gal!), which is apt, really, and not just because her setting and posture speak — as it were — to some of how I’m feeling at the moment. Even though we spent this day last October talkingtalkingtalking, there’s still that quiet, that calm, that observation and meditative focus I get when I take pictures sewn throughout.

And now you get me being quiet. Starting now. Here I am, quiet, quiet, quiety-quiet. La la la, wordless bliss. Okay, no really: right now. No, wait, I — now. Quiet. Hmm. This kind of reminds me of The Monster At The End of This Book. Fine, seriously. No more words.

(Oh, hush.)

posted in Heather Corinna, subconscious life, photography & art, wah | permalink | comments (7) »

Greetings from the Planet Codeine!

So, I’ve been given the marvelous gift of some serious bronchitis and a bacterial infection from The Baby Liam, and the extra bonus of two totally busted up ear canals from my fever. The sick was not going away, even standing for a bit was exhausting, some of what was coming out of my throat was pretty creepy, and it’s ungodly how long it took my fever to break. Then Bri called late Friday after seeing the pediatrician again to tell me the word was that given what he had, I probably had bronchitis or pneumonia. Beyond feeling awful as it was, as one of those folks who tends to, if she picks up a bad virus, wind up with all the worst complications possible, that was scary news.

Got to spend yesterday going nuts trying to find anyone left in town for the holidays to give me a ride to the clinic. Finally, after nearly a whole day of hunting — always fun when you’re sick as a dog — 1happygirl was a shero of the revolution, and raced from an appointment to help me out. We tried to get up to the Minute Clinic in the hopes of my not having to pay out the wazoo for care, but not only did mumblegrumbleoverconsuminggreedymaterialistbullshit festive holiday shopping traffic keep us from getting there before close, I did grab the nurse leaving when we got there and she told me I needed chest x-rays they couldn’t do anyway, so they couldn’t have helped me even had we gotten there in time.

So, back we go to my neighborhood and the ER (which is a mere three blocks from my place, so I was pissed at having worked so hard to avoid the inevitable which would have involved no ride at all). I’m of course apologizing left and right to everyone on call there because growing up in hospitals, I know full well that people going into the ER when they haven’t, like, lost an eye in a car wreck or been shot in the guts is often really maddening for ER staff, but there weren’t any other options. There also wasn’t anyone else in, so I felt less guilty than I might have once I saw the ghost town it was inside. I expressed my amazement to the staff: given how freaking loony people get with this holiday, I fully expected to see the chairs full of people with head injuries from clocking some kind of relative in the head with the universal remote, post-Hanukkah latke-bloat, maybe faces scarred from acrylic nails due to a tussle over the last remaining Nintendo game that if little Timmy didn’t get this year, would end the whole damn world.

I know I’ve mentioned it before, but public healthcare here in Seattle is beyond dismal. The few clinics there are tend to have intense waitlists due to the homeless population: save that it leaves me without healthcare, I’m fine with that: someone on-street is way more likely to croak from what I’ve got than I am. The one or two that don’t have atrocious reputations for charging serious sums and sometimes not even seeing patients or giving any care at all. Honestly, healthcare here (and most insurance companies in WA won’t even cover self-employeds, even if you have the cash to pay for it, no less) makes public health in Chicago look like a freaking mecca, which is just nuts since this city has so much damn money. But I can bitch more about that later.

I get my x-rays, the whole works. Let me just tell you that as a smoker of 25 years on now, having those x-rays done was scary as hell. I have had a zillion medical tests done in my life, but usually on my brain or in my guts: I don’t recall ever having a chest x-ray. So, it was all moment-of-truthy. But I was basically told that teeming bacteria from this toddler-based infection aside, my lungs are apparently something of a medical miracle and look just swell. Well, that’s something.

Two honking prescriptions, a trip to the market for more soup and such (including a pile of soy yogurt to avoid the hell big antibiotics wreak on one’s girly bits), and a call to poor Bri who feels terrible about all this later, I was back out on the couch in a codeine-robitussin induced stupor. I half-watched North Country for the gazillionth time because home alone, I could shamelessly weep like a baby during the last few minutes of the film where everyone finally stands (including two women as extras who were part of the real-life case, which is where I tend to really lose it) up for Josey and against sexual harassment. I watched that scene three times on a loop. It’s hokey, I know, but I was too ill to feel like an idiot about it, so it was very pleasant. If I hadn’t passed out right after, I would have watched the last five minutes of the season seven finale of Buffy to get the same buzz, too.

Anyway, I’m told not to expect to earnestly feel better for a couple of weeks. Wonderful.

I’m so frustrated right now: this week and some to myself was going to be exactly what I needed to get so much done, and so far, I can barely do a damn thing or stay up later than nine. Of course, it’s all doubly maddening when you already feel like shit on a stick and then not only have to deal with a couple of friends who you’ve dropped everything for more than once just not stepping up, but with the whole wonderful reminder of how much it really freaking sucks when it comes to healthcare in this country. Most of my life has been spent in the public health system, sans insurance, and the girl gets bitter sometimes. Now and then, I’ll listen to someone insured kvetch about how they’re sick and they have to get into the doctor, and what a pain that is, but that usually involves them dialing a number they already know, making an appointment, and driving a car they own to get there. Still a bitch to go anywhere when you’re sick, for sure, but that process is not a day or more of endless research, calling clinic after clinic, waiting for buses to get there or begging for rides, having to fill out piles of forms every time, sending in all your income information, being seen by seriously overworked clinic staff, and knowing the whole time that the chances of having to go to more than one clinic, paying out the wazoo every time, are high. Tack unto that, of course, the knowledge that whatever the bill is may potentially screw you for months — or when the worst happens, years and years — and leave you even poorer than you were already… just ugh. Do we have a single person working in U.S. Government who is actually, or who at least has been, for any substantial period of time, uninsured? I’m thinking not, because if we did, there’s just no way in hell our healthcare system would still be like this.

Suffice it to say, it’s doubly frustrating since chances are, the additional job I took in order to help with the existing financial badness will now likely be covering ER bills for at least a few months. Oy, that thing where when you finally think you can get even a little ahead and then get whacked with something that sets you even further back. It never freaking fails.

Eh, enough of my whinging. I’m going back to the couch. You know, the real one.

P.S. My horrendous headache just would not go the hell away, so I figured that some masturbation sure couldn’t hurt and might help. Holy mother of…something. All those women taking Robitussin to thin their cervical mucus for fertility purposes? Umm, is there a reason we can’t just use this stuff all the time as a lubricant, because I tend to be a pretty juicy gal most of the time already but that was pretty outer limits.

P.P.S. I just finished watching and what an awesome film that was.

posted in Heather Corinna, apropos of nothing, wah | permalink | comments (7) »