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Monthly Archive for September, 2010

Dear Company that He-weasel is applying to in Chicago

Published on September 29, 2010 in Quotidien. 57 Comments Tags: , , , , .

I know it is not standard or customary for a wife to send a supplementary letter along with the cover letter and resume, but there are somethings I think you need you to know about my weasel. First, He-weasel’s resume may not adequately reflect this, but he is a workaholic. Really, I am a therapist and I know that workaholic isn’t an actual DSM-IV diagnosis code for this condition, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. It does and he is and you will benefit  from this. He will be the first one there in the morning and the last one to go home at night. You want  to have a meeting at 2 a.m.? Want to have him come in on Sunday? Want a guy who will take your call anytime night or day? My He-weasel is your guy. He doesn’t know the concept of a 40-hour-work week. And breaks and lunch hours are in his mind childhood constructs that one ought to give up with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. He will work as if your company is his own and because of this we will occasionally fight about this and I will say things like, “You shouldn’t work harder than your boss” and he will say that he knows that I’m right and then he will go right on back to working as hard as he was before.  You see, this all goes back to early childhood issues; He-weasel learned from his family working hard would get him love , acknowledgement, and approval.  Because of this he is a fantastic and diligent worker. I have even, on occasion, acknowledged his parents for this as I am not quite as industrious as he and I am amazed by anyone who finds the idea of doing nothing to be objectionable.

He-weasel is a extremely dedicated husband and provider and would do anything he could to take care of me, this is one of his highest values. The more he succeeds the better he  feels he can take care of me( this is his thinking, not mine) and the more he feels he has demonstrated his love for me, this all goes back to those previously mentioned childhood issues and some left-ever ideas that comes from being second-generation Greek-American. And you see, both of us REALLY-REALLY-REALLY want to get back to Chicago and jobs like his don’t come on the market everyday and, really, I am not just saying this out of any kind of self-serving motive, he is the perfect candidate for this job. You don’t know it, but when you wrote the ad for this job you were in fact writing the description of my husband. He is a brilliant at his job and he has all of the requirements you are seeking and more.  You also might be impressed to know that he is so beloved by his employees that when he takes one day off from work (which he rarely does, he has six-weeks of unused vacation time, a pack of unused personal days and nearly all of his sick days. On one occasion when there was a pressing deadline he went into work with a kidney stone. How do you like that for dedication?).  And then there is his loyalty, he has loyalty the likes you have never experienced before unless you have a dog. Even though he was born the year of the tiger, he is actually much more of a dog( I mean that as high praise). I see him as a delightful mix of one part working dog, maybe a German Shepherd,  and  one part curly coated Labrador Retriever. Not that you would be, but even if you were a bit tyrannical and had some unrealistic expectations of your employees, He-weasel would find nice things to say about you ( unlike me) and find ways of rationalizing your crap behavior. Yes, I would try and get him to see that you are too demanding and how it isn’t fair that you are asking him to do the work of two people and how at least if he is going to do all of that work that he should be paid more for it. He, on the other hand, will never complain and he will see if perhaps he could take on more responsibilities. Because of all these wonderful qualities we would of course expect him to get the high-end of  the advertised pay scale.

I feel that I must tell you that He-weasel and I are very much in love and we have been happily married for nearly 18 years. While that may not seem important to you, I believe that our long standing and stable relationship speaks to He-weasel’s character. With He-weasel you won’t have an employee who is distracted by domestic disputes. And as I am an only child, an introvert and a writer, I prize my time alone—I just thought you might want to know that.  We also have no children which means he won’t have to leave early for soccer practice or school fairs.

In closing, I have included attachments of anticipated moving expenses from L.A. to Chicago. It would be our preference to make the move before Winter begins. Moving once there is snow on the ground is not ideal, but we would be willing to do it if you can’t get your act together before November. I also wanted to reiterate, in case there is any doubt, He-weasel is your guy. Have I made that perfectly clear? Oh, and to demonstrate the above, He-weasel just walked in the door. He said, I didn’t realize how late it was. He was at the office and realized that everyone else had long ago gone home.

Thank you in advance for your consideration. I look forward to meeting you at the Holiday Party. I will be the one next to He-weasel who is raving on and on about how lovely it is to be back home and how lovely Christmas in Chicago is.

Very sincerely,

Belette Rouge, aka Mrs. Weasel

p.s.  I assure you that once you hire He-weasel you won’t hear from me again. And I promise, should my He-weasel get the job to write only wonderful things about you and your company on this blog and on all other electronic and print media. I also assure you that any complaints I have about how you overwork him or any other such grievances would be saved for my therapist and not aired on this blog.

_________________________________________

Writers note: Any overstatements, exaggerations, or hyperbole in this document are purely accidental, unintentional and would be motivated by the purest and best of intentions.

Animus

Published on September 27, 2010 in Dreams, Meaning Making and Psychology. 65 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

Long before I knew about Jung I knew about animus. I didn’t know what the name was, but I had known my animus for YEARS. There was the dark animus who had harassed me since I was ten. In my nightmares this faceless man had chased me and threatened me and insisted I didn’t look at him. I thought, as most would do at 10, that he was my bogeyman and it certainly didn’t occur to me that he was a psychological complex and/or an archetype.  Years later there were positive animus figures who showed up in my dreams and they completed me. With him I felt strong, self-confident, smart and  loved. Now that we were together  all would be well forever….but then I would wake up and I would be crushed and completely lost without him.  The details of some of my positive animus dreams have stayed with me longer than memories of actual men I have dated.

Just in case you don’t know anima from anime, let me try to break this down for you. The first task of individuation, consciousness or just not being an unconscious git is to pull back our projections and become aware of our shadow. Once we have done that we then need to integrate the inner opposite gender aspect of ourselves and/or, in fancy terms we need to integrate our unconscious contrasexual nature, or we haven’t become all we can be (I didn’t intend to quote an Army commercial but my animus inspired Muse made me do it. Stay with me, men have anima figures, that function as their soul, and women have animus figures.

The anima is something each guy has, no matter how butch or bad ass or unevolved he may be, he has an inner feminine even if he is completely disconnected from it—it’s there. Really, it is, trust me—I am a paid professional. When you think of anima think of Dante’s Beatrice, Jerry McGuire and the gal who completes him or the other one who makes him jump on the couch like it was a trampoline at a kid’s birthday party, or that Twilighty vampire guy and the human he loves too much. These are literary versions of what happens internally. Dante needed his anima, his soul, or he was in hell. Jerry needed Renee Zellweiger or he was just a soulless agent. Vampirey guy has no soul and so he needs Anima figure to get one and he also needs sunblock but that is a different post. And women have animus figures, this is really at the core of every romance novel. “He completes me.” But the he that completes you is in fact an inner he, he is your animus.

Note to reader: please read the following in your head or out loud in a thick Swiss accent. If you can’t manage that at least have a cup of Swiss Miss as you read the following:

Every man carries within him the eternal image of woman, not the image of this or that particular woman, but a definite feminine image. This image is fundamentally unconscious, an hereditary factor of primordial origin engraved in the living organic system of the man, an imprint or “archetype” of all the ancestral experiences of the female, a deposit, as it were, of all the impressions ever made by woman-in short, an inherited system of psychic adaptation. Even if no women existed, it would still be possible, at any given time, to deduce from this unconscious image exactly how a woman would have to be constituted psychically. The same is true of the woman: she too has her inborn image of man.

“Marriage as a Psychological Relationship” (1925) In CW 17: The Development of the Personality. P.338

The animus, according to Jung, is both a personal complex and an archetypal image that exists within all women.  This is not easy stuff to boil down, so let me have my good friend Carl Gustav Jung say it for himself (and no he doesn’t have a blog and you can’t friend him on Facebook).

The animus is the deposit, as it were, of all woman’s ancestral experiences of man-and not only that, he is also a creative and procreative being, not in the sense of masculine creativity, but in the sense that he brings forth something we might call . . . the spermatic word.["Anima and Animus," CW 7, par. 336.]

That is the last I am going to quote Jung for a while because he had some serious issues about women with large animus figures. Really, it is almost unbearable to read his writings on the subject without wanting to cast dispersions on his manhood and suggest he get a sports car and a Costco size vat of Viagra. Let’s just put it this way, I think he had a very small *animus*, if you get my drift. Truly, for a guy being surrounded by super smart women he had some serious biases about women. I know it was the time in which he lived but it can still be hard to read his theories on women without occasionally wanting to throw out the Basel-born Jung with the bath water.

Back to the the animus. The animus in women isn’t so much a soul figure, as the anima is in men. The animus is more of an inner guy  who is loaded “with fixed ideas, collective opinions and unconscious a priori assumptions that lay claim to absolute truth. In a woman who is identified with the animus (called animus-possession), Eros generally takes second place to Logos.” I was, prior to lots of work, such a gal. I had a serious animus complex. I tended to idealize the masculine and logos over the feminine and feeling. Being as Athena daugter of a Zeus father, i.e. born out of the head of my father (if you have no idea what I am talking about I will include a link to a mythological Cliff notes on the subject). The animus is also a bridge to the Self (yikes, me trying to explain the Self could take a while. Suffice to say the Self is what you are after in Jungian psychology and it is the more transcendent/trans-personal part of yourself). Here is what my dead and somewhat sexist friend and the Father of Analytic Psychology has to say on the subject:

Like the anima, the animus too has a positive aspect. Through the figure of the father he expresses not only conventional opinion but-equally-what we call “spirit,” philosophical or religious ideas in particular, or rather the attitude resulting from them. Thus the animus is a psychopomp, a mediator between the conscious and the unconscious and a personification of the latter.[Ibid., par. 33.]

Differentiation is the key in working with animus. The animus, tends to be bossy and opinionated and has answer for everything…mine certainly did/does. What one wants to do is differentiate the messages that come from you( the ego) and those that come from the animus and that way you are conscious of where these messages come from and that gives you more freedom to take or leave the Old Testament truths that the animus likes to bust out ( lots of rules, thou-shalts and general Super-ego kind of statements that can at the very least be oppressive and at their worst they can be paralyzing).

And since my animus was unusually large, before I learned to differentiate my animus, I had a hard time being around groups of women. This made attending grad school in my chosen field a little hard( as of late Psychology has become a mostly female profession)and made it harder still to attend a conference given by Marion Woodman, the grand poobah of Jungian Femininity, on the Feminine in which  all of the attendants were garbed in shawls and gypsy skirts and Goddess necklaces. My animus was repulsed by the idea when I suggested we attend.

“Are you kidding me?” My animus asked. “We got to get out of here. This isn’t for us. This is too touchy, feely. Where is the intellect? Where is the logic? Where is the objective????? Hell no, we won’t go.” It shouted in a chant of self-preservation.

There was a big part of me that agreed with my animus and wanted to hightail it out of the Hilton Ballroom that this estrogen rich event was happening in. I was ready to go  faster than you can say “Sororities, Knitting Circles, Estrogen, and Ovaries”. However I knew that my animus had been running the show for far too long and at the time I was trying to learn about mothering, as most of my practice had been filled with college aged girls who had mother wounds and my mother wound had left me feeling like it was MUCH better to identify with the masculine. I knew that Marion Woodman had something to teach me about the feminine. So I did some differentiation work with my animus. In my imagination I  booked my animus a suite at Caesar’s Palace. I gave him cigars and booze and chips and gift certificate’s to steak houses and strip clubs. I told him to leave me alone for the weekend so I could get to know myself independent of him and that I would be back for him on Monday. My animus agreed. And it worked. This was the beginning of me differentiating from my animus. I began to see what thoughts, ideas and feelings were mine and which were from the animus. This was big and it was totally worth being a part of Shawl Fest 2006. That said, I am still pretty identified with my animus—only now my animus is more positive and not the dark one that so long tormented me.

Speaking of the dream that I had for decades in which the dark animus was chasing me, what I have come to realize is that I wouldn’t have died if I looked at him. He would have died. He was afraid of the light of consciousness and so he lied to me and told me that if I looked at the complex it would kill me. Guess what, I am still here and he is gone. The positive animus remains.

So, ladies, any animus figures in your dreams? Fellows, any anima dreams????

*************

More on animus:

Here, here, here , here and here.

If more than two people are interested in this topic, I could write a post about how our animus or anima can create acrimony in relationships with *real* men and explore Jung’s idea of marriage as a psychological relationship. If you are interested vote with your comments. If you aren’t I can always write about shoes, Igor, Lily and how much I hate L.A. No hard feelings. ;-) My positive animus’ feelings won’t be hurt.

Space: The Final Frontier

Published on September 24, 2010 in Meaning Making and Psychology. 40 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

No, these are not the days of the Star-ship Enterprise. This is me thinking about why exactly I signed up for the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Program. And it all comes down to space.

The first time I saw Igor I was astonished by how much space he created for me and still felt close, there and with me. The first session was especially palpable as I had never been in that kind of space before. And I had done a whole lot of therapy prior to finding Igor, through out my 20′s and 30′s and there had even been some back in the tweens and teens. I tell you that not to dig up the painful truth that I have spent as much money on therapy as I have grad school and I have likely spent more time in therapy than I have at the beach, parties, and or any other recreational activities( in my defense I must say that I am not big on recreational activities).

Soon after I began with Igor an old boyfriend came to mind and how whenever I left Igor’s office I never thought of this guy. This is where things get tricky so I will type slowly and expect you to read slowly, as it is going to be tough to follow this logic. Okay, so for the ten years that I saw the yellow toothed Jungian, after almost 80% of our sessions I would think about this guy. And as I was just married and wanted to stay that way I wasn’t all together thrilled about this guy popping up in my consciousness post-session. I thought it meant that I was a hot mess and that I was drawn to something self-injurious. Why exactly was I thinking about this guy who was as healthy a choice as a heroine-speed-ball-Oxycontin cocktail with a vodka-hemlock chaser? I told old Yeller and he never had an answer. He would say “interesting” and then go off about some obscure Minoan fairytale and how the Princess wanted to date a poisonous snake.  I would say “uh-huh” knowingly and nod my head and pretend I had some idea what he was talking about. But the truth is that I didn’t. We kept up this farce for  TEN years( feel free to laugh at me in the comment portion of this post).

On the way to Igor’s office each week I pass the condo of the parent’s of the poisonous snake. I can’t help it. They live in a condo on a main street and to avoid them like some kind of black cat would take a lot of traipsing around circuitous side streets. Driving L.A. is difficult enough without adding unnecessary side-streets. So I didn’t. And each week I passed their condo and each week I passed the church I imagined we might marry and each week after Igor’s I wouldn’t think about him. He just didn’t come to mind.

After several months of seeing Igor it came to my consciousness that I hadn’t thought about him and so I told Igor. As soon as he heard of my decade of post-session rumination he asked me what my associations to poison paramour were. I explained that he was VERY bad for me and yet when we had been together there had been enormous intensity. It was one of those toxic relationships that required me to keep a shot of adrenaline around as when I would hear his voice I would go into near anaphylactic shock. Igor, upon hearing my associations immediately had an interpretation. Your mind was trying to tell you something: 1)It was trying to tell you that the relationship with your old analyst lacked intensity and so it picked a symbol to compensate for the lack of connection. Secondly, it picked a symbol of a man that was clearly not a healthy choice. Your mind was saying: You need a therapist where there is more connection and this guy you are seeing is not a healthy choice. He was right. The yellow-toothed Jungian was highly-intensity impaired. His passion level never got about a Nordic high of cool, calm, collected and, perhaps, a bit constipated.

I remember one session with Yeller in which I was totally overwhelmed by all the things that I might chose to talk about and so I just sat there. I sat there for five, ten, twenty, thirty-five, forty, fifty-minutes, The  session was over and I did not say a single word. Old Yeller never said anything.  And on sessions when I did say something I never felt like we connected. There seemed to be this constant missing. I would say something and he wouldn’t get it and then he would go an scholarly diatribe about what Jung said or what the Greeks said or some other ancient culture said and he would  carefully stay far away from what I said.  Each week I would leave feeling confused, unheard and, to be honest, incredibly stupid. As I look back I don’t know why on earth I stayed so long. I guess that the truth is that I thought he was the best because he was so smart that I had no idea what he was saying. Note to all who are considering therapy: My reasoning was ridiculous. One should be able to understand their therapist. One should not need to speak ancient Greek or Aramaic in order to work on one’s father complex. I think that the other issue is that I thought be being there and sitting at his feet, I thought that it meant I was smart. It did not.

With Igor I feel a connection. He is there and with me and totally attuned and yet I have plenty of space. When we first started to work, I marveled that one could be connected and still have space ( this tells you everything you need to know about my family of origin issues).He gives me space when I need it and he somehow knows when he needs to interrupt my silences. Igor would NEVER-EVER-EVER let me get away with 50 minutes of silence.  NEVER. And that is a good thing.

Almost as soon as I experienced the space that Igor created for me I knew that I wanted to create it for my clients. I wanted to learn how to do this and this is why I enrolled in the program. I enrolled because I want to became an inner architect. I want to create spaces that contain. I want to create environments where change can occur. And I wouldn’t hate it if I ended up getting some referrals out of it. I also wouldn’t mind some personal growth. And to be completely candid, I get a hunch that it will be good for my writing, but that isn’t something I admitted to on my application for the program. I don’t imagine Psychoanalytic Institutes like to think of themselves as memoir and blog fodder.

24-hour psychic flu

Published on September 23, 2010 in Psychology. 42 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

I feel this strange mix of feeling so much better than I did and yet a little embarrassed by how quickly I recovered. There is some company I heard about on the news that has a policy that if you are sick just one day that they won’t give you a sick day pay . It is their belief that you have to be sick at least two days to be really sick. I wasn’t aware until today that I held such a policy for myself. Usually when the black dog of depression find its way onto my lap I am stuck with it at least for a week or two. I can never recall feeling the kind of darkness I felt on Tuesday and having it gone by Wednesday. One takes a trip to the Underworld it is not usually for just an overnighter. It is much like going to Europe, if one is going to make that kind of big trip one usually stays for a while. However this time I made the big trip to hang out with Hades and I was back before I had even acclimated to the terrific time change and I wasn’t there long enough to partake in a single pomegranate.

There are reasons I recovered so quickly: Talking to lovely friends who totally got how I was feeling; taking action that made me feel like I am not a victim; comments on my blog that showed me I have lovely friends who care about me; easy access to Igor. However, I have had these things in the past and they didn’t allow me to recover so quickly. What is different? I guess that there isn’t an  easy answer. The truth is that I  have changed. In the nearly two years I have been working with Igor I have changed. Maybe you have noticed. People seem to. When I was in Chicago friends saw it. They said things like, “You seem so different—so grounded and so different” and they meant it in a good way and not in a “California has turned you into a different person and we don’t like this one.” Rather they seemed to think that I was different in a good way. And I know it is true. I can feel the difference and today, with how quickly the heartbreak, disappointment and despair was shrugged off, I can really feel the difference.

When I saw Igor yesterday I talked about the precedent to my pain. I unpacked it the reason the pain was so profound and the more I did the more I felt a sense of relief. And, dear friends, to illustrate my relief, I did not cry one tear in Igor’s office. I did laugh. I did find him to be effective and I didn’t for a second think about telling him that I was quitting. And by the time the session was over it was clear that I didn’t need another one today. Oh, and I did tell him about a dream I had had the night before. Now I will tell you:

In the dream I am at the psychoanalytic institute where I will be attending the Adult Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Program. It is a big building.  It was easily four stories tall, only it was only a one story building; it had a very high ceiling and felt new and spacious and all together lovely. The building somehow reminded me of what a modern building in Israel might look like. It was made entirely of sandstone brick, kind of one that was used to make the Getty. As I waited for the class to begin I realized that this wasn’t just an institute but also a university. It was too big to just be an institute. Next thing I knew, as is the way in dreams, someone was telling me it was time for my supervision appointment.

I went into a small and dark office and in that office was my old Jungian analyst with the bad teeth. I sat across from him and knew that I couldn’t say anything about how strange it was to see him for supervision.  I just sat down( and my body was leaning far to the right in a very dramatic way) and I started reporting a case to him. As I did it I was aware of how nervous and unnatural I was sounding but I decided I needed to just stick with the case. I told him about my client and he gave me no feedback. Next thing I knew( see this happens all the time in dreams) our session was over and I was getting up to leave and he said, “okay, see you next week”).

Then I went out into a hall and there was a woman who was wearing extremely, almost costumey, Bohemian clothing and she was asking a group of people to name where the source of the dialogue that she was quoting. As soon as I heard it I knew the dialogue was from Babylon 5 or Battlestar Galictica or one of those bad science fiction shows that He-weasel watches. Instead of saying that I said, “Battlefield Earth”. As soon as I said it one of the people in the crowd corrected me and told me that it wasn’t Battlefield Earth. The Bohemian woman kept talking and led us away from the building through a grassy courtyard and into a small classroom. As soon as we got into classroom I realized that class had begun. I panicked as I had left my stuff in the big building and I had no paper and I was unprepared. I would have to go back to the big building and get my stuff and if I did I would be late and in trouble.  And that is where the dream ended.

So as I have told you in the past, Igor is not so great with dreams. He is great in many areas but with dreams he is a suckasaurus. However with this dream he didn’t suck.
“You are in a beautiful place that feels spacious and expansive and it feels good to be there. You go into a dark place when you turn to someone you don’t have resonance with. And when you follow this Bohemian woman away from the building, who is talking silliness, that is when you experience yourself as  ”unprepared and in trouble”. It is not the deepest or most detailed dream analysis I have ever heard but it worked. As soon as I heard his interpretation I felt better. It was true, I have been in a good space–an expansive space and through an interaction with someone that I don’t have resonance with I went into a dark place.  The dream took me out of the room with my old Jungian with bad teeth and away from the Bohemian woman talking about nonsense and out of the underworld and the black dog of depression jumped off of my lap and ran off to wherever he lives when he is not with me. I left my Wednesday with Igor feeling that I was back in the light—back in the beautiful space I had been in before the darkness overtook me. I was back home.

I hate it when I can’t tell you something

Published on September 22, 2010 in Belette in Psychotherapy and Psychology. 74 Comments Tags: .

I have stuff going on and it is stuff that I can’t talk about it here and because the issue that I can’t talk about is primary in my life I am finding that there is nothing else I want to talk about. I hate that. I hate having a big pink elephant in the room that is stepping on my laptop as I write and even as this stupid pachyderm presses down on the keyboard with the full force of his weight I am stopped by an even stronger internal imperative that says, “YOU MUST NOT WRITE ABOUT THAT”. Oh, and just in case you thought I told you everything, I will admit that I don’t. I have a policy of not talking about He-weasel’s work, his family, and his therapy. I just don’t do it. It isn’t that he ever asked me not to. I just decided not to. Hmmm….I guess He-weasel and I should talk about that.  Maybe I am missing an untapped source of material. Nah, I am not going to do that. His work and his family life is his and it is not for me to talk about on the blog even though the players in the drama of his life often beg via their bad behavior for a starring role in a blog post or two or twenty or two-hundred.

What I can tell you is that something happened that triggered all my feelings of disappointment and  infertility and hopelessness and how nothing ever works out for me and how I am cursed. A black pit of depression has swallowed me and because of that I don’t want to see Igor this week( I am aware that makes no sense, that will be a theme of this post). Actually, the truth is, I don’t want to see Igor anymore—period.  That’s right, you heard me, I don’t want to see Igor. I want to quit therapy. I want to thank him for all that he has done for me but I want to tell him that the things I am really upset about cannot be changed by him. But Igor won’t let me quit. When I see him I  am going to tell him that I want to quit and how it is nothing personal and he will find a way to make  funny my desire to quit and he will make me laugh and he will get me to see how this is a pattern I have. I am going to do my best to tell him that I he is right and how I want to quit anyway. I fear that I will not be successful in my strategy to say goodbye to him.

A wise friend of mine told me that she tries to just feel feelings and not make decisions based on those feelings. I suck at that. Really, I am suck-sucktastic-suckasorous. I don’t think I can do it. My whole m.o. is to make meaning out of everything and I can’t seem just to ride the wave of despair that I am on, even though I know that is the better way to go. I know intellectually that feelings aren’t facts and yet this feels like a fact and the fact is that I feel bad.

What I can tell you that my magical thinking belief  (which I get is problematic) is that the reason this depression came and its antecedent is that I dared to be happy. You see, on some level I believe in a god (even though I am agnostic) who wants me to be unhappy. So by daring to say that I was happy on Monday in my post I have angered this imaginary god and so he has smited me. I wish I could be more specific. But I guess that the details don’t really matter. What matters to me is that I feel bad.

So back to talking about what I can’t talk about, I am still waiting to hear from Igor. He hasn’t called back yet. And I can tell you that leaving him a message when I am crying is not a lot of fun. I have mentioned before that he has an old-timey answering service and some guy with a thick Indian accent answered the phone, “Dr, Igor’s exchange”.  ”Hi, this is his Thursday at 12:00 and I need to have him call me back immediately.” However,  I had to tell him my name and spell it out and he took forever to get it down and I was crying and I wanted to say “just fucking hurry up. He’ll know who I am. He has my number” but I didn’t. I tried to hide my tears as I spelled my name and gave him my number that I feel sure Igor has in his Blackberry. “Are you a student or a client?” I thought the tears would give away my status but I suppose I could be a student who just got a bad grade. “Client” and then he paused, he paused a pause that was nine-months pregnant and he finally asked me “and your message…”. “The message is, “call me’” and with that I hung up. I have never hung up on anyone other than my mother or husband before and I have to say that it felt kind of good. I am not going to do it again, except in extreme circumstances like today.

The phone’s ringing, hold on……

That was Igor. I told him what I can’t tell you and he told me to come in tomorrow at noon. I agreed. So tomorrow instead of doing what I planned on doing I am going to spend Wednesday with Igor and then I will go back on Thursday.

And just to make it perfectly clear how bad I am feeling: I have not opened a box I recieved from J Crew. It is there on the counter and there is cashmere in there and there is a shirt and I don’t even care.  And I will not be watching Dancing with the Stars tonight and I will not be reading a book. I will be writing in my journal and it will be a hot spew of molton mess that I would never dare to publish here. I will not be getting any more activity points( in non-Weight Watcher language that means I will not be exercising any more tonight. Lily and He-weasel are going to have to walk with out me). However I will not let the black dog of depression lie to me and tell me that I will feel better if I have He-weasel pick up some Fettucino Alfredo at Sisley’s. I’ll stick with the low cal and figure friendly crying, moping and sitting in a sad-sack pool of suffering and self-pity.

I’ll let you know how it goes with Igor tomorrow. I might post on Thursday if I can manage to tell you things even as I can’t tell you things.

753 words on why my frown has turned upside down

Published on September 20, 2010 in Quotidien. 52 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

  • My Kate Spade shoes are waiting for me in the concierge’s office. I can’t take a picture of them because they are locked up in the prison of the package room. In they sit with books from Amazon.com, printer cartridges from Office-depot.com and contact lenses from lenscrafters.com. My beautiful shoes sit in darkness with objects less lovely than they, and silently they wait for me to come and claim them; fret not for soon my shoes and I will be reunited.
  • Today is my first day on Weight Watchers. This doesn’t sound like a reason to be happy—but it is. It is because I made a choice to do something that is good for me and because I am no longer just hoping that I magically lose the 25 pounds that torment me.
  • It is the 5th day of my new fitness regime. I recently I read how Beyonce runs on her treadmill towards a picture of an Oscar. My fantasy that motivates me is that I am prepping for my book tour. Perhaps I can cut out a picture of a book signing and hang it in front of me as I move in unnatural elliptical motions toward my goals. Yes, this in fact may be a delusion but I am okay with that.  A delusion that gets me thinner, fitter and healthier can’t be a bad one. Can it?
  • I have over 120 comments on my last post. I’m not bragging—I am just saying that it makes me very happy to hear how blogging has impacted you. And, I have to say, that hearing the really nice things you had to say about how I have impacted you made me feel really good—REALLY good ( crying with happiness good).
  • Gazebo News wrote about me. Okay, this is me bragging. But it is also me saying that I impacted home with my post. They know that I miss them. They know about my cat’s photo in Walgreen’s. Perhaps because of my post, perhaps the people who live in Lake Bluff will feel a little luckier for living where they do.
  • “Growing up Jung: Coming of Age as the Son of Two Shrinks” is lying on my bedside table. It is waiting to be read. It knows that I am becoming more and more Post-Freudian. It is hoping that it can lure me away from Klein and Bion. We won’t tell it that I am in the Psychoanalytic Training Program. We won’t let it know that I am just reading it because I am reading every memoir I can find about being in therapy. We won’t discuss the fact that I am anthropomorphizing a book and that I am projecting my feelings about leaving Jung onto a memoir. We will instead discuss how I bought the book not because it is about Jungian analysts, I bought the book because I am buying every memoir I can find about being in therapy. It is, as you know, my topic.
  • Igor was VERY excited about our decision to move back to Forest and Bluff. He said that the trip to Chicago changed me. He said that he could feel the difference in me as soon as I walked into his office. He said that in the past I believed that we chose Lake Bluff for the child we were going to have. Igor says that now I am able to claim it for myself, all the things that I wanted Lake Bluff to give my imaginary child are in fact things that I wanted for myself. He says that now that I can say this, now I can go home again. It turns out I didn’t need two sessions. I only needed one. And I didn’t cry.
  • I hate L.A. less now that I know we are going to leave here in nine months or so. I might even be able to write another “365 things that don’t suck about L.A.” I might even manage to complete that list before I go. If I do I want an award for that. I want a prize, a statue or a plaque acknowledging my heroic efforts.
  • “Dancing with the Stars” starts tonight. Can one have TV cheese when on Weight Watchers? Just how many points is in TV cheese, anyways?
  • This is how Lily looked as she watched the O.S.U. game on Saturday. Go on, look at Lily in her Ochocinco OSU jersey and try not to smile. Oh, and, for you football fans, Lily’s team won.  Go Beavers!

    • Write a blog, change your life

    Published on September 17, 2010 in Meaning Making and Psychology. 130 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

    Blogging has changed my life. It is right up there with getting married, going to college and starting therapy in terms of its profound life changing impact. Blogging has changed things about my character that I thought were unchangeable, permanent and irretractably set in stone. For a long time I have been ruminating on writing a blog post called “write a blog, change your life” and that is because I am constantly amazed how blogging has changed my life and changed me. The reason that I haven’t written this post before is that the longer I blog the more ways I experience the varied and surprising ways that blogging has changed my life and changed me and that the full impact of its effects can’t be known until I am done blogging and I am nowhere near done blogging. So that is why I am calling today Part I of what will clearly be a multi-episode series. For today I have decided to to document the four ways that blogging has changed my character.

    Character Change Number One: Discipline

    Three years ago no one was calling me disciplined. No one. Not even the people in my life who feel obligated to lie to me in order to buoy my spirits—the people who would tell me I was beautiful when I had a huge zit on my forehead and who would tell me I was smart when I had just made a really stupid mistake—and certainly not Kelly Valen who is the author of the soon to be released and must be read book,  Twisted Sisterhood. I don’t mean to name drop here. I know it is unseemly. However I have to tell you what a BIG deal it was for me to wake one morning to see that Kelly, a person I don’t really know and who has no reason to say things to me that she doesn’t  truly mean,  had left a comment on my Facebook page in which she described me as “Disciplined and prolific”. Her kind compliment about my character as a writer motivated me to plug my lapbook into my printer and print her compliment about my character and once it was printed I then took a hard look at myself in the metaphorical mirror and I saw that I was  no longer the undisciplined flibbertigibbet that I used to be.  Okay, to be kind, that isn’t entirely true. I would and could and did get things done if an authority figure (teacher or boss) gave me a deadline but if I didn’t have an external deadline there was little chance I would get any writing done. Thanks to regular blogging I have developed discipline and that is a miracle. If only I could translate that discipline to my fitness regime.

    Character Changer Number Two: Prolific

    As I said above, I was lazy and undisciplined and that led to an embarrassingly low volume of creative output. In the course of a year I felt like I has really achieved something if I had managed to write a few short stories and an essay or two. However, thanks to the blog I have written over 700 posts (not all of them published) and most of those are on the long-winded side (thank you patient readers), two book proposals, essays and a short and shockingly bad stab at a novel. I am in fact a prolific writer.  I don’t know how it happened or when it happened other than I started the blog and I stuck with it.

    Character Change Number Three: Brave and/ or courageous

    Before I started blogging I was a scaredy cat. I let fear stop me from taking all manner of risks. And truth be told I still have a good amount of fear. That said, if I had to tell you the characteristic mirrored most from those who read my blog is that I am brave and/ or courageous to write about what I do on my blog. Whenever I get this compliment (and o do get it a lot) I am always baffled by it. I really don’t get what is so brave about what I write. When people tell me I am brave I often say internally, “or I am stupid” as I just don’t get what I am doing that is so brave or courageous. However I have gotten this compliment at least 100 times so it must be true. I am here by owning that I am brave and courageous. I also own that I have no idea why I am.

    Characteristic Change Number Four: Trust

    I have trust issues that go waaaaay back.  I had a therapist many years ago that told me that my issues go back to Trust vs. Mistrust. I so mistrusted her analysis that I got up out of my chair mid-session and left and never came back. So, yeah, I had some trust issues. But somehow blogging and having such wonderful readers has helped me with this core issue.  I trust you even though I may have never met you in 3-D. I have shared some things with you that I wouldn’t share with my own family and friends. In sharing the really hard stuff with you I have had some big healing.  One of the most healing days in my life, I credit to the blog and to my LOVELY readers, and it was in response to my post Cassandra Complex. Reading your comments was more healing for me than all my time in Al-anon and work with many therapists. Truly, I will never forget that day and reading those comments—it was a life changing experience. I will never be the person I was before that post and for that I thank you all.

    Because of my trust issues I generally viewed the world as hostile and dangerous. This is no longer true.  Now I tend to view the world, or at least the bloggy world, or more specifically the bloggy world that I am a part of as a very supportive, loving and encouraging place. I have made some true and life long friends through this blog. I have made the kind of friends that if I was ever in crisis, and Igor had left the country, I could turn to. I know if God forbid something happened to He-weasel or Lily that I could come to the blog and tell you what happened and I would get real, immediate and meaningful support. I know I could count on getting phone calls from bloggy friends around the world and that there are some of you I could even count on you to show up with a casserole and comfort even in the darkest and scariest nights of the soul and that is really saying something. You, my friends, have changed my belief that I am alone in the world—save my little circle of support—and for that I am eternally grateful. Just yesterday I got a handful of calls to check and see how yesterday went with Igor. Have I mentioned yet how much I love you all?

    Well I do, even if this is your first time here. I love you for reading this far and giving a hoot what it is I might have to say. I have received so many unsolicited acts of kindness from my blogger friends that it truly helped change my sense of the world. Just today I was named the Blogger of Note (BON) over at Words of Wisdom thanks my dear bloggy friend Privilege who nominated me for this honour.  Thank you, Privilege! Thanks, Words of Wisdom! And thanks to all of you who are here from Words of Wisdom. If this is the first time, for your benefit and , perhaps, reading pleasure, I am linking to three of my favorite( and perhaps life changing) posts as is part of the protocol of being a “Blogger of Note”.

    Cassandra Complex

    16 Things You Don’t Say  To Someone Childless Not By Choice

    My Lot in Life

    *************

    I would love to hear how blogging has changed your life.  Come on, be brave and courageous and tell me your secrets. You can trust me and feel free to be prolific.

    Make mine a double

    Published on September 15, 2010 in Meaning Making, On Home and Psychology. 93 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

    I have never been big believer in double-sessions. I have never had one with Igor, even though there have been times that I was sure I couldn’t get out everything I needed to in an hour—I have never asked for more. As soon as the plane landed I emailed him and told him I needed a double on Thursday. I hadn’t written the entire time I was in Chicago, not even in my journal. But as soon as I got on the plane I started wrting and I didn’t stop until the flight attendent told me to put my chair and tray table in an upright position. I had, by the end of the flight, written 42 pages. And, I’ll have you know they were not the kind of ramblings one keeps in one’s hidden journal. All 42 pages were intended for you. That said, I realizes 42 pages of long hand prose might be a bit much for the blog.

    But as I have much more in my to say about Chicago, at least 82 more pages, I knew that a 50-minute session would be completely inadequate for all I have to say. I need to tell him how good it was to be home and what a good time I had.  I also need to tell him how much it hurt to be back home and how it felt like I had just walked back into my life and my impulse to go to my house and take out my keys and open the door and crawl into bed and go to sleep and wake up from the bad dream I have been living.  I want to take him the bottle of Lake BLuff sand that I took from Sunset Beach and let him smell the soil that  stirs my soul.  I want to tell him about passing the first house we lived in Lake Bluff and how we went by so fast I wasn’t able to see if anyone was living there. And then I need to tell him how I couldn’t go past our house, I couldn’t even look in its general direction.

    And then there is all I need to say about yesterday and how very different it felt when I was alone in Chicago and not with my lovely host. When I was alone it was really like I was back in my life and not just on vacation. When I took the train to Lake Forest all the feelings I had anticipated I would met as soon as I arrived in Chicago greeted me. He needs to hear that even as much as it hurt to be back *home* that he was wrong and I was wrong and that I can go home again and that all the baby shit didn’t hurt like I thought it would. The babies and kids don’t get to me the way they used to, at least most of the time.

    Perhaps most importantly I want to tell him that I want to move back.  No, really, I mean it. No more of this trying to make L.A. work, I want to go home.  I want out of L.A. and I want out now. I was wrong, you can go home again and I am going to go.  All of that came to me when I went to Walgreen’s in Lake Forest, not a place that one would imagine would create such strong feelings.  I went there because my stomach hadn’t been quite right for days and being back in LF was doing nothing to settle my stomach. And so I went to Walgreen’s. I have actually been to the LF Walgreen’s many times in the last couple of years. I am sure I have told you already, sometimes when I am really homesick I walk the streets of Forest and Bluff in my mind.  I walk down Scranton Avenue and try and remember all of the houses in the right order.  I walk around the shops of Market Square and I try and remember the windows of the stores and the brick under my feet and the sounds of the fountain. And sometimes I walk the aisles of Walgreen’s. When one has undergone IVF for two years and has had a cat with cardiomyopathy and another with diabetes one spends a lot of time in Walgreen’s.

    Yesterday when I went to Lake Forest I had planned on stopping at Talbots and Jcrew and Helanders, but I didn’t imagine I would go into Walgreens. However as soon as I was in the store I knew I had to go back to the pharmacy to see if my cats’ photo was hanging on the pharmacy wall. It was. Then the tears began. Then the feelings, that I am still not far enough away from to put into words, overtook me.

    You may be asking yourself, “Self, why are there pictures of Belette’s cats hanging in the Walgreen’s pharmacy?” You see the pharmacist was a big animal lover and because of this she had done many special orders and special favors for my feline friends. One day after a particular act of kindness I decided to print a photo and have the cats *write* a thank you to the pharmacist.  As soon as I gave the photo to the pharmacist she hung it on the wall. That photo has been there for almost four years.  As soon as I saw the photo I lost it.  I was flooded with feeling. This photo on the wall that has been there the whole time I have been in L.A. said to me louder than any person could say, “THIS IS YOUR HOME.”  When I heard that message I began to decompensate. I wanted to call someone and tell them what had happened so they could come and pick me up and I could fall apart. Only there was no one to call. I called He-weasel and told him what had happened. I told him I needed his help.  I needed him to help me stop crying. I couldn’t be crying on the streets of Lake Forest. I had to stop. He-weasel was confused. For the last 19 years we have been together, every time he has told me not to cry I would get angry with him and so when I called him and asked him to help me stop crying he said, “Go on and cry. It’s okay to cry.” “No”, I explained, “I have to stop. I can’t cry here, not on the street.”

    Right as I quit crying I asked him to do something I haven’t asked in almost three years, I asked him to promise me something. I asked him to swear to me that we would get back here. “We’ll work something out.” His admirable statement was not what I was looking for. I was looking for a promise. I needed swearing. But the truth is that even if he did swear that I wouldn’t believe him.  Years ago I had asked him to swear we would NEVER come back to L.A. and he, despite his best efforts, wasn’t able to make that happen.

    So I want to go to Igor’s tomorrow for two hours and I want to tell him that I am done with L.A. I want to give him my metaphorical two-week notice on this place and tell him that this time I am really serious. I have had it with L.A. I want to go home and I want to go NOW. And then, in the safety of his office, I want to do all the crying that I couldn’t do on the streets of Lake Forest and I want to make him understand that he was wrong and that I was wrong and that I can and that I will go home again.

    Home-a-phobic

    Published on September 9, 2010 in Meaning Making, On Home, Psychology and Quotidien. 33 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

    No, that is not a misspelling of a very ugly word that inspires all kinds of bad behavior and ridiculous legislature. I am talking instead about a phobia that isn’t listed in the official list of phobias and yet I am sure that others, besides me, have. This non-official phobia has many manifestations. The types of Casa-tastrophies one might fear are many. There is the pediatric version of this disorder. I definitely had that one. No one wants to go to a place where one is likely to be met by drunk people who are  mad at you for something. When that happens frequently enough you begin to fear going home. The adult version is more varied:  There is the fear of buying or committing to a home because one feels trapped like an animal and one’s respiration level increases so severely just thinking about signing a contract to buy that  a paper bag to the mouth is the only way to restore one’s breathing to normal.  There is the fear that I don’t presently suffer from that one’s property value is going down-down-down and that they have more debt than equity. Then there is the terror that one’s house is a hungry and sadistic monster that conspires to eat one’s saving by continually needing unexpected repairs and maintenance and rewiring just out of spite.  I imagine there are other home-a-phobic manifestations that I don’t have, maybe someone has a fear of having a house fall on them or maybe there are others who the word home is a kind of psychic black cat that they do their best to avoid.

    Lately I have been feeling some serious home-a-phobia and that home-a-phobia has been constellated by my travel plans to Chicago (which by the way, as you read this I am on the plane to Chicago and so I will be scarce on the blogosphere for a while). I am talking about the fear of going home. It seems counter-intuitive for me to be somewhat apprehensive (and if I am being completely honest I am a closer to terrified) about returning to the place that I love. But I am. I am not afraid of going to Chicago   ( no fear of flying here). I am not afraid of being in Chicago.  What I am afraid of is being there and then having to come back here.  It was so hard for me to leave Chicago when last we met that I haven’t gone back in over two years.

    I knew that at the very worst of times when I was seriously HATING L.A. and in acute shock that we were actually living here again that if I went back I would have likely decompensated on the front yard of our old house. I would have been the crazy lady who tried to retake her old life and lost it when her key didn’t unlock the door. The very friendly Lake Forest Police Department would have been called to take me away and perhaps take me to Lake Forest Hospital for psychological assessment.

    And even when I was starting to feel a little bit at home here in L.A.( just typing that sentence makes me feel more than uneasy) I had some serious apprehension about going back to Chicago and then having to come BACK to L.A. again. Here is how I thought it would go. “Hi, He-weasel. Uh, I know my flight is booked for 11 a.m. today, but I cannot get myself to go anywhere near O’hare. I am not coming back to L.A. I can’t. ” He-weasel would talk slowly and calmly the way you do when someone is having a panic attack, “Honey, you have to get on the plane. Your life is here. I am here. Lily is here. We miss you. You can do it”. When that wouldn’t work then he would go to phase two: “You don’t have a house there. Where are you going to stay?” When I tell him that I am going to go check into the Lake Forest Inn and await his arrival then he would begin to panic, “But I don’t have a job there. My job is here.” I would blithely ignore the practicalities of his perfectly rational statement and go back to the unalterable truth that I cannot get on the airplane or even get within a five-mile radius of the airport.

    Soon I will be *home* again, only it isn’t really my home anymore. Ugh. Tears come just from typing that. I can’t imagine the tears that might come when I drive down Greenbay Road, the road that inspired me to say out loud each time I drove it, “I am so lucky to live here.” The thought that comes to mind when I imagine driving down it in the next few days is “I am so unlucky not to live here”. Must remember to pack Kleenex, Visine Eye Drops and Igor’s phone number.

    After two years of Igor I don’t imagine that the Lake Forest Police Department will have to be called in or that I won’t be able to get on my return flight next Tuesday. That said, I can imagine that being in Chicago for five days in the Fall will be a total delight and that seeing all the places I love (Sheridan Road, The Art Institute, Portillo’s, Lake Michigan, JCrew in Lake Forest, etc.) and seeing my favorite non-Paris city in my favorite season will make L.A., by comparison, feel really unattractive.

    Soon the trip will be over and I will be back home in L.A.. I will be back in the place that doesn’t feel like *home* and there will be feelings and grief and loss and I will spend my days comparing and contrasting Valencia to Chicago and I will be even more dissatisfied by the bland, treeless, and lackluster environment that is my current mailing address.I am dreading the post-Chicago grief that I will undoubtedly feel. I feel some anticipatory grief just thinking about it.

    Thomas Wolfe was wrong, you can go home again. What he should have called his book was “You can go home again only when you do you won’t likely want to go back to you new home and when you do you are going to need an extra session with your therapist to process all the feelings that come up.”

    *****

    While I am gone I hope you will be so kind as to pop over to my pal Laura Munson’s blog. She kindly invited me to contribute a piece on phobias. It was so lovely to collaborate with my Lake Bluff friend that I met through her book, her love of the Lake Bluff Fourth of July parade, and a Post-it note.

    Autumnal exhilaration

    Published on September 7, 2010 in Quotidien. 53 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , .

    I am a Summer hater. The older I get the more I hate it. With extreme Celtic heritage and skin that requires 45 SPF sunblock for after-five events, the heat makes me incredibly cranky. Anything over 79 degrees and my inner mental state, no matter how cool or calm or adult-like I may be acting, is that of a terrible-two year old who falls to the floor and kicks and screams until the world aligns to his will. I also hate the clothes of Summer. I hate the weather demanding that I show my arms in all of their non-Michelle Obama squeedgyness. And, while I am whinging on, let me also tell you that I hate the sweating that melts away my well applied makeup and all the tourists that crowd Southern California’s freeways and all the kids out of school and how Summer reading and films are known for their fluffiness and lack of substance and I hate white wines that are supposed to be crisp and refreshing when they really just taste like an overpriced bottle of turpentine. I am much like Snow Miser, I hate all Summer time things, except the fresh produce. Peaches, corn, berries, and other summertime produce are the only Summer things I really like( while I feel sure that Snow Miser prefers to get his vegetable from the grocer’s freezer section). So the promise of fall has me giddy and smiling more broadly than your average Jack-o-lantern.

    Autumn is my favorite season and ‘autumnal’ is one of my favorite words. It makes me think of sweaters, cider, cranberries and the scent of hopefully non-cloying scents of the season such as pumpkin pie, Carmel lattes or beef stew (no vanilla candles or lotion, if you please, as those scents turn me into a crotchety and unpleasant human being who will refuse to buy a couch from you. Yes, Stacy B., at the Pottery Barn, that is why I didn’t buy the sofa or the side-table from you. I could not stand the scent of you and your Bath and Body Works Vanilla Body Lotion. That lotion is my personal cryptonite. I hate-hate-HATE it. Okay, enough of my olfactory peculiarities, back to Fall….). Another reason I love the word ‘Autumnal’ is that it reminds me of an extremely overbearing supervisor I once had who had trichotillomania and a dog that she brought to the office who she, for reasons unclear to me, insisted on feeding large amounts of cruciferous vegetables to disastrous and odiferous effect. Well anyways, this supervisor once heard me use the word autumnal and her immediate response was, “You were an English major, weren’t you?”. If I hadn’t had so MANY challenges with this supervisor and her stinky dog, and when I say many I am saying that this woman was a cuckoobird who used to count how many envelopes I used and would get furious with me for sitting in her chair, I might not have found her major leap from a SAT word for Fall-like to be sort of odd but since she was not just a thorn in my side but an entire rose garden of thorns in areas well beyond my flanks, I found her leap to be completely ridiculous and proof that she was indeed a nincompoop.

    Just being in the month of September has me happier than I have been in months( and the fact that the temperature has gone done from 106 to 79 in three days hasn’t hurt either). I have decided that today I will go through my closet and start making room for the fall clothes that have spent two unhappy seasons in storage. Also, I have decided that it is time to bring out the marroon, plum and red lispticks that are bold and opaque and the kind of shades that can hold their own against crusty breads, hearty stews and glasses of Bordeaux, these shades have been out of rotation since well before the Easter bunny brought me a big basket of Laura Mercier pale, beige and boring pink lip glosses and a Cadburry egg. Speaking of food, I am swapping my William-Sonoma salad cookbook for their more soul satisfying soup edition.

    I, however, have reasons other than the Autumnal season to be happy about:

    1. I got accepted into the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Program. In 24 short days I will, every Thursday, spend my afternoons learning about Bion, Klein, and all the other Post-Freudians. No longer will my post-Igor afternoons be spent lunching in Beverly Hills, instead there will be a menu of transference, counter-treansference, and attachment issues and for dessert schizoid and manic defenses which are much more satisfying and figure friendly than my far too frequent trips to Sprinkles for a cupcake. That said, there still me be an occasional trip to Sprinkles.

    2. In two days I will be in Chicago. This is BIG for me—HUGE, even. I haven’t been back to Chicago for over two-years. This is such a loaded topic for me that this deserves a post of its own. But for sure having a trip planned to Chicago just as Fall arrives has me feeling very happy.

    3. I am waiting to hear from someone and I have that ‘waiting for big news’ feeling.  It is nerve wracking and yet highly enlivening.

    4. My gorgeous friend, Enc at Observationmode, played stylist for me this weekend and she put together a gorgeous outfit for me  from JCrew ( the cardigan and sparkling pencil skirt below). Something about shopping with Enc made me want to throw out everything in my closet and hire her to help me come up with a style that really suits me.  Enc has much better taste than I do and I was amazed to see what a difference a great stylist can make. Now I just need a life so I have someplace to wear this gorgoues wardobe I feel sure she could create for me.

    Note to Enc: What do you think of the skirt paired with opaque grey tights? I think I am loving them, but I would love it if you would green light them for me or not. If so I will stop at Wolford today and pick up a pair. Le sigh, just the thought of soon being able to don opaque tights has me in a near euphoric state.

    5. I have created a playlist for my trip to Chicago. “Chicago” by Frank Sinatra; “Autumn in NY” by Billie Holiday; “October” by U2; “Pale September” by Fiona Apple; “The Last Day of September” by the Cure;  ”September ” by  Earth, Wind, & Fire; “September Song” by Frank Sinatra; “Things have changed” by Bob Dylan (this song makes me think of Wonderboys which always makes me think of Fall). So any ideas on the theme of the playlist? Come on, take a guess…don’t be shy.

    6. I have the new Preppy Handbook, “True Prep” on its way to me and I cannot wait to read it. I just hope that the book doesn’t make me overly scentimental for the Sperry Topsiders, whale print turtlenecks, duck print cloth belts and madras bermuda shorts that I long ago gave to Goodwill.

    7. Lots of good TV lately: The U.S. Open is still on (I am loving Monfils and Djokovic and, of course, Nadal). There was an Anthony Bourdain marathon last weekend that I have taped on my DVR so I can watch him over and over and over again. And there is MadMen and Weeds and other shows and books and films of gravitas that go well with a snort of Port and a nice chunk of cranberry chutney covered Camembert.

    8. I can excercise more now that isn’t so G.D. hot. So that should up my mood too. I am happier when I exercise and happier still when there is some viable hope that I might actually lose some weight. Losing would weight would make me really happy and would perhaps necessitate me hiring Enc sooner rather than later.

    9. He-weasel admitted that I was right about something that I have been trying to convince him that I have been right about for the last 18 years. I have been actively working on not being attached to being right and I have worked VERY hard to let him find his own way and to not be attached to him doing things my way. But now that he sees that I am right I find myself REALLY happy about that. I am working on being happy about this in a quiet way and not in my usual, “I TOLD YOU SO” way. To thank me for my lack of doing my traditional “I told you so” dance I was rewarded by someone cleaning the house, doing the laundry and making me poached eggs just the way I like them. There are benefits to biting one’s tongue.

    10. I get to see Igor today. I haven’t seen him since before the big trip to Portland. I have a whole lot to tell him. And feeling like I have worked through a ton of stuff in the last two weeks and that I don’t NEED to see him today the way I thought I did last week.

    About Me

    My name is Tracey, aka La Belette Rouge. I am a psychotherapist and the author of Freudian Sip @ Psychology Today. I blog about psychology, my therapy, dreams, writing, meaning making, home, longing, loss, infertility and other things that delight or inspire me. I try to make deep and elusive psychodynamic concepts accessible and funny. For more information, click here .

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