Couch 216: The Baseball Couch

My mother made me three masks on her grandmother’s sewing machine. I like to imagine the same machine made masks for the Spanish flu, back when it was new.

How long has this been going on without your knowledge??!

Gorgeous! I never saw a purple one with its flower!

Pretty depressed. Gender dysphoria is awful. I bawled my eyes out to T over the phone. She was very validating which helped. I have no memories of a time before abuse and self hatred, sometimes the grief is overwhelming. My abusive sibling who SAed me is trans too, used that as justification. I don't know how to tell people just how much that effed with me.

Neither had i ubtil i sawit on a local gardeners fb page. Gardeners are so generous if they are thinning out or dividing or trimming plants they will generally give you things or charge a couple of bucks. Also we have a lot of backyard nurseries which pretty cheap too.

An interesting observation. I asked my daughter to fold and put away her clean clothes these included her school uniforms she put away everything. Does anyone else think that maybe she isnt fully committee to leaving school or else she would have binned her uniforms?

I still have various cloths (mainly for different sports) as well as T-shirts from childhood which I didn't throw away. For some of them, I thought maybe I might go back and could use the same cloths again, for others I just had memories that I didn't want to forget. Hard to tell why she didn't throw away her uniform, could be that she thinks there's a chance to go back but it also could be that she just likes the cloths and wants to keep them for now.

Ugh I'm bored. I have a full afternoon of tele-visits and then go camping tomorrow but I woke up early and have had nothing to do.

I really should have go for a run or meditated but I didn't feel like it. Stupid brains.

Hi Couch,

I'm having a hard time today.
Crying more than usual is something to talk with R about, right?

I finished a Zoom meeting with colleagues and broke down.
My job should not be such a saving grace.

Hugs, Lost, I'm sorry you're having a hard time...


I just had a really emotional session (that I actually wasn't expecting to be emotional). These are emotional times.

I was talking to Dr. T about Covid and things being shut down (and not feeling safe about doing some of the things that have just opened up, like restaurants at half capacity). I said how it was amazing to me that it was already mid-June. How it's like time seems to be going both very quickly and yet very slowly all at once. How there's not really much of anything to mark the days. He said others he'd talked to felt similarly, as did he. "It just sort of feels like part of what should be the good years of our lives are slipping away." I agreed. I said how my daughter only gets so many summers as a kid, and she's missing out in this one. Dr. T, I think trying to lighten the mood, but also presumably with some truth in there, was like, "Yeah, and what about my summer?" I said he deserved a good summer, too.


He also said at some point how these are really sh**ty times, and I agreed. I said how the whole "life sucks right now" was a nice positive note to end the session on. And "I guess I'll talk to you Friday then." He said, "We'll figure it all out then." Me: "Life? We'll figure out life?" Dr. T: "Yes."

Report back and let us all know the outcome, will you? Be nice to hear how this mess has been figured out at last.

Will do!

We will be taught by a man who has a fish! What can go wrong?

Kids around here are riding bikes and scooters and playing ball with their parents and siblings. We have a lot of people meeting in the park and picnicking 6 feet from their friends. There are things to do which are safe and non-confining.

I have trauma T in an hour and thinking how easy it would be to just not log into Zoom for the session. I won't because I think the center's policy is to call for a welfare check if you miss a session and they worry about you based on your history. At least that's what happened with the last T I saw through them for a month.
Just don't know how much I feel up to talking about what my triggers are today.

To be honest, I was assuming that LT would be the one doing the figuring out.

And, apparently, a fluffy dog!

I had a telehealth Primary Care Appointment today. It was quick. She did refill my inhaler which is awesome. Usually I get it refilled through urgent care but what is the point of having a PCP if they don't do stuff like that. She wants me on another med for asthma too, like not a rescue one. My labs came back good so she is happy about that, except my A1C did go to 5.8 which I am not happy about. She just said stay away from sweets. There has to be more to it, but I think some of my medications can cause issues with blood sugar so that's just peachy. So I don't have to go back until December. I'm happy about that. It was weird having a telehealth appointment for my PCP. I've had telehealth for specialists before but not for her. That was a first.

I feel like a whiner being concerned about finding some privacy for my session this afternoon, because I turned down an in-person session sitting 6 feet apart wearing masks when she offered that. I hope h falls asleep or something by then. right now he's watching a movie but it's only noon so it's possible he'll fall asleep in time for my session.

I'm not surprised you turned that down, Artie. The relationship/proximity thing seems to be as important to you as it is to me with R.

Masks kill connection, and so far...that's the only thing I've observed about them.

Ugh, telehealth sucks all around. I had a telehealth visit for my own problem last week, and all they did was tell me to go to the ER. Then today I had to do telehealth over the phone with some of my primary care patients and it was just awful. They'd be like, "I have a rash," and internally I'd be going, "um, I can't see it, WTF do you expect me to do about that???"

Stupid COVID.

Something I said to T today was, "I just want my life back." As in, pre-Covid life.

I think the most frustrating part about covid is that I don't know that life goes back to normal, but I haven't accepted that yet.

I think there's no going back. This just becomes our new normal.