the snot n' coach.

it's 4:30 am, our client is visiting, and my head is a giant pile of mucus.

i've realized, more than ever in the last few weeks, how good at my job i am and how much i truly enjoy it. there's something safe about "growing up" with a company. it forces perspective. it allows one to look at the changes as i imagine (i'm stretching here) a parent looks at a child when they've tried something and failed at it. "look at this being i love. how brave of him to try so hard. next time, he'll get it right...or at least he'll get a little closer". with all the insidetrack grumblings recently, i've felt slightly defensive. i've seen the soft underbelly of this organization, its growth from about 70 people to 300. all the changes in between. we try so hard to do it right.

at 4:30 am, i'm thinking about my skill set and what i want to do with my life. it's what got me out of bed, detached my arms from a warm and sleeping mexican. i want to coach - to be of service and facilitate growth in people. i'd be open to working with executives, but i think my passion lies in education. if m. and i were both working with a school district, we'd both have summers off with kiddos. imagine the vacation possibilities! perhaps a nice quaker high school will take me in, create a position for me coaching their seniors on the transition to college. i'd like to start my own business, but oh the risk.

to have fallen into my passion so early in life is something rare i think.

i'm a lucky mother fucker.

indecisive.

sometimes, deciding things all day wears me out. it wore me out so intensely today that i almost broke down in tears when i had to decide what to make for dinner. peanut butter and jelly won out as a grilled cheese, or even a frozen dinner, was too much work.

my job is incredible. it's incredibly emotionally intense. i feel the highs just as intensely as i feel the lows. we jump into people's lives every day - people who see college as their way out of the life they're living. the students we serve on our account are living largely at or below the poverty line. they have children, jobs they often dislike, and little experience making a plan and following through with it. they struggle with taking ownership over their own worlds and the happenings within them. they frequently experience trauma and bring us into the current storm. our coaches are incredible people. they care deeply, and for 8 hours a day. we do good work. we do a lot of work, and a lot of ourselves, no matter the boundaries we draw, are involved.

one fellow manager likened it to having 100 units of energy to give out each day...and our job taking 50-80 of them, depending on the day. even though i'm not working from home and at night much, my energy is largely depleted by the time i get home because of the intensity between 8:30 and 5:30.

balance is a hard thing to achieve. the darkness of november doesn't help things either.

on a lighter note, m. is doing wii boxing upstairs...and this makes me grin a little.

i'm angry.

i'm angry.

i'm angry that if i wanted to start my own coaching business i would have to choose between doing so with no health insurance or working a side job for health care. i would not be able to get onto meghan's plan because we both have vaginas.

i'm angry that our love isn't seen as valid enough to warrant legal protection.

i'm angry that people who don't know my family can decide the future of it, legally.

i'm angry that i feel relatively powerless to do anything about it.

i'm angry that my rights are being put to a mother fucking vote.

i'm angry that my wonderful straight friends who want to get married feel guilty for doing so when i cannot.

i'm angry that one of us may never have legal ties to our future child who we plan and raise together.

i'm angry that this is a religious thing instead of a legal thing.

i'm angry that this is keeping me up when i have an incredibly busy day tomorrow.

i'm angry that i give so much of myself to making people better people, but am told "thanks for all you do, but you don't deserve the same rights we have".

the fight is far from over.

i'm pissed.

be careful when asking a mexican to choose a documentary.

all i wanted was a good documentary to watch while i gave her a shoulder rub. she chooses one called "dear zachary" from her netflix watch instantly queue. the filmmaker is a dear friend of a murdered man who drives across the country recording memories of his friend for his son, who's a baby. the friend's baby was birthed by the friends killer - psycho girlfriend. so, the friend's parents try to get custody of the kid. psycho gets out on bail and kills both herself and this baby. this one final tie to their son, she takes from them.

i cried. a lot. like flood gates, hot damn, haven't cried this much at a movie since watching "i am sam" in the theater. m. sleeps on the couch almost the entire time. and now i'm awake because every time i close my eyes, i see scenes from this movie. it's crazy how much it effected me. i've never been a mother. never a grandmother. never lost a child or a grandchild or anyone close to me. it's one of my greatest fears.

m. is now in bed. i untangled myself from her and now i'm on the couch with the black dog who has no idea what i'm doing up this late. the coffee at 4 probably wasn't smart either. it's amazing how life can change. two people met on a double date in the 1960's and this entire story unfolded. if one sperm hadn't met one egg, none of this would have happened.

sometimes i understand my mother's agoraphobia. life seems like such a random chain of events, i even understand the want to believe in god or something more powerful with a master plan. i'd like to understand it anyway.

guilt.

buckley has started to pee on the tomato plants.

i think it's funny and hope the neighbors wash them before making salad.

i should feel a little bad, yes?

i wanna be like the dog park ladies.

so i finally took the boy to the dog park tonight after a week off. hey, it was cold and wet and he has a neighbor dog to play with. anyway, when we arrived there was an older woman there with her two dogs. she was probably about 65. i offered her my ball thrower as she was chucking an incredibly slimy, raggedy, tennis ball with her hand. she declined with a huge smile and said she liked it better that way. about a half hour into our play date, her friend drove up. she yelled to her pups "hey! judy and sweetie are here! judy and sweetie are here! go say hi! go say hi!" when judy and sweetie got out of the car, there was a reunion of sorts involving high pitched voices and loads of tail wagging. we said our goodbyes and headed to the car as the woman, her friend judy, and their dogs began their walk and gossip through the park.

when i'm 65, i want a friend to meet at the dog park. i want to laugh and throw balls to my dogs with my hands, not caring about the germs.

carbs.

lately, all i've wanted are croissants. croissants, and rolls, and bagels, and biscuits, and soft fresh bread. a couple times in the last two weeks i've actually left my house in the cold evening, gone to the market, and come home with the objects of my cravings. strangely, the scale says i've stayed the same since before my trip to carolina. i think the scale is broken, but m. insists on its accuracy.

when i was a child, my weight gain all stemmed from carbs - mainly pasta. as a lonely kid, i would get up on a saturday morning, make an entire box of pasta, sit in front of the television and between 10 and 1, devour the whole colander full of al dente goodness. it was something i could control - what i put in my mouth. i rolled into my 19th year at 239.5 lbs. after many, many, years of fat camp and weight watchers, i've managed to keep myself between 165 and 169 for the last 12 months.

i feel that familiar tug at my sleeve - that beckoning of the familiar. i have two croissants and 1.5 bagels on my kitchen counter. there's a safety having them near by.

7% battery left.

i have yet another tension headache. ugh. other things i currently have include but are not limited to: a black dog who needs a bath, a sickly mexican, a grand plan, some won ton soup in the fridge, a cell phone on my belly, people i miss, some more weight to lose, a love of fall, a craving for cinnamon rolls, a book i've yet to start, a new winter hat, an obsession with the internets, and a nice clean sink, void of last night's dishes. not bad.

inaugural spin.

this is all in an effort to write more and post on facebook less. we were at a wedding in north carolina last week and i had three people come up to me, who mind you i don't keep in touch with, and ask me if "mexi" was there with me. sign number 159 that i spend too much time on facebook. something about instant, mass communication with people i know, used to know, or care about, comforts me. strange, right? i'm hoping that blogging will be a vehicle for those who want to know more about my life to catch up with me in a more in depth forum. readers of the blog will be by invitation only. the link will not be posted on facebook.

my main hope however is that i start writing again. really writing. meghan reminded me the other night that she doesn't know me as a writer. how odd. i was known as the poet of my high school. i filled up quite a few journals in college. honestly, pen and paper was never far from my side until i discovered facebook. i'm not totally leaving this online community of "friends"...only taking a step back. i'm intentionally working to rediscover my narrative side and stop thinking in third person, one sentence, updates. we shall see, we shall see.