Wishful Thinking? in Everyday Ramblings

7 weeks until the solstice! Good for us but not so good for fire danger oh say in Australia.

The picture is a broad median over near Reed College that Mrs. Sherlock, Frieda and I walked yesterday morning. There is a house a few blocks down on the left that was the first fully electrified home in Portland. A 15-year-old girl won it in an essay contest.

Those are Linden trees. We weren’t sure until we checked but that was my guess because of the tree labeling adventure our Parks Department did in my local park last month. There is a Linden over near here. This privileged neighborhood has a map you can access online of all the street trees. It is so cool.

The homeowners went all out in whimsical Halloween decorations. Many skeletons with subtle political content like oh say an empty bottle of bleach.

I kept remarking that an amazing number of people we saw over there were not wearing masks. That is not true in our denser neighborhoods. In Oregon we keep hitting caseload highs and had an a sadly high number of reported deaths yesterday. And we are low compared to the majority of states…

The cats are both now sneezing randomly and not very often but otherwise are doing great. Diego hasn’t thrown up in over a week! That is some kind of record and it has been 10 days since I gave him any anti-nausea meds. I have them on a simple diet with no treats and a small rotation of wet food and that seems to be working in concert with the steroids.

And with the help of instructional videos and all the deeply buried experience with Sammy and Stella I figured out the Sharps box, which I still had, and giving the B-12 shots.

It is a relief to have that all in place.

My social anxiety peaked this week on one of the Yoga Teacher calls I participate in on Zoom. Both Kes and Mrs. Sherlock say that it is a good thing, that I am practicing expressing opinions and talking to folks that know what I am experiencing.

This is not about students; it is all about the communication styles and intentions of world-famous teachers in this case in a particular type of yoga training. There has been a lot of abuse over the years and the gist of it is about one’s internal “Bullshit Meter”.

I have a highly developed one and Charity shared with me from her perspective as an alcohol and drug counselor that the reason I do is that at some point I learned all about bullshitting to get want I needed and wanted. She was worried I’d be offended by that, but I thought it was funny. Because of course it is true.

The other side of the coin is that I also have a well-developed sense of when someone is being authentic. The teachers I admire strike me as that. Including the ones in this group.

But one of the teachers felt strongly that she had to chime in and say that as I hadn’t been in the group very long and didn’t know she was a psychotherapist and not to disparage drug and alcohol counselors and then went on to do so…

There was a patronizing tone in everything she said. And I am like, you don’t think I know that an acuity towards detecting bullshit can be helpful to avoiding victimization (which you seem to be unhealthily focused on)?

I was hoping I would have outgrown this kind of social insecurities by now!

So says the woman who just purchased a big lighted magnifying glass to help her read labels properly.

The other teacher clearly has her own issues that have absolutely nothing to do with me. I sent a clarification email to the facilitator of the group that I was talking about myself and not anyone else and talked it through with my trusted confidants.

Now, I need to learn how to not eat a half of a big bag of tortilla chips the next time the insecurities flare up and I’ll be good. :)

Last updated November 01, 2020