merrypersies and I went to the Whole Foods in Alewife yesterday. Walking back to the Alewife T stop, we watched the rain clouds coming in. We had no idea what was in store for us.

A few drips preceded what was to come. They brought little warning. merryperseis was still unsure if it was even worth it to take out her umbrella. She decided to take it out, but it really wasn't any help.

The storm lashed out with what essentially was a wall of water. Our umbrellas snapped instantly and we were soaked. Not the kind of soaked where you run through the rain hoping to get out before you become "too wet". This was an instant soaking. We were immersed. The sheets of rain and then the hail pelted us as we ran towards the nearest building. The nearest building wasn't nearly near enough, but we ran towards it anyway.

It was very disorientating, everything moved so fast. The hail was pea-sized and we were never in any real danger, but it did get the adrenaline going. We sat under the awning of the Alewife Towers until the storm subsided a bit and sloshed our way back to Arlington.

This has been a weekend of many good happenings. invalid_userid came down from Maine to visit. She arrived Friday and we watched Doggie Poo that evening. Her, purpleglitter and I all went up to Mount Auburn Cemetery for photos and good seeings yesterday before the rains came and we spent today doing various fun hoppings around.

Also very exciting is that recoiling moved into the house_of_clocks this weekend. She is one of the most wonderfully awesome people I know and I think this is the dawning of a new era.

For breakfast yesterday I had a veggie burger with basil mozzarella cheese and barbecue sauce; for lunch I had pizza balls with basil mozzarella, faux ham, and faux turkey topped with parmesan cheese; for dinner I had spaghetti in pizza sauce with parmesan cheese; for my healthy snack I had cashews.

Food went well, but I only got half of my half hour of exercise in with a walk up to Arlington Center and back in last evening's thunderstorm. Getting in my exercise is going to be hard right now because I've been having lots of wobbly/dizzy/fally/seizurey/whatever-the-hell-who-knows-the-doctors-apparently-don't episodes, but I will not let that be an excuse. I will continue to try to make Project Three Meals work. I refuse to let this crap control my life.

I had fun with recoiling at pride, even if it was a bit colder and rainier and windier than I would have liked. It's been an odd June weatherwise. Most of the candy thrown from the floats fell in the puddles, but the people passing out sunscreen and fans were hilarious. Obviously the event was planned in anticipation of a warmer day.

Every year the corporate side of pride gets more and more blatant. Near the beginning of the parade was a loud and obnoxious Delta Airlines float. Its booming stereo, by far louder than anything else in the parade, literally made me nauseous. I couldn't decided if I though the bad placement of the Stolichnaya float directly in front of the "Sober and Proud" group was amusing or disturbing.

All in all, though, I had a good time and enjoyed being there. While the weather wasn't wonderful, it was still a nice change from the normal swelter Pride is usually held in and groups like the Stonewall Warriors still counterbalance the corporateness to a degree. And of course, the Dykes on Bikes were kick ass.

I saw a double rainbow this evening after a quick and violent thunderstorm. Perhaps a good omen?

The sun has returned!! The flaming ball is back in the sky!!! What a wondrous sight!! What a wondrous sight!!

Waking up and posting in the middle of the night I am after being sick most of the day. Although I tend to love the rain, I think the cold steady drizzle finally got me.

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Tomorrow I see my therapist for the first time in 5 weeks. There will be a two month gap coming up when I go to Ontario for July and she is on vacation for August. At this point, the gaps do not bother me. I seem to get along just fine without therapy, and am still questioning the point of even continuing it.

My skepticism about therapy at this point has nothing to do with my current therapist, who is the best that I've found to date. My skepticism is simply due to the fact my doubt that the asymmetrical relationship offered by therapy is able to provide me with benefit at this point.

I have many people in my life that I'm on a more even standing with whom I can talk freely with, and I trust their advice and insight more simply because we have two-sided relationships. I know them more. I know their biases, backgrounds, and beliefs. I know them at all, in fact. The vary nature of the relationship with a therapist prevents that level of trust and understanding.

The one-sidedness of the relationship with a therapist can be incredibly useful for some people in some situations, and I've found it helpful at points in the past. However, for me here and now, I don't think it's working. It may be time to move on.

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Now I go back to bed.

The thunderstorm feels perfect right now.

There are very many stresses in my life right now. I feel as if I'm being pulled in every direction at once. So many hooks wanting to sink into me. Wanting to pull me apart again. A seemingly endless supply of things to be stressed by. At some point I have to accept that I cannot make everything well. I must simply make the best with what is. Accepting that is something I'm working on, for it's easy to say, it is easy to know, but it not easy to truly accept and be mindful of. Now is an important time to make that effort. To be mindful and stay centered. The winds are howling and change is coming whether I want it or not. If chaos is to rain down, then I must be at peace with the storm. I must not fight the wind, instead I must seek the future.

I haven't fallen down once since the rapture I experience a little over a week ago. Not once. Something was awakening. The unwinding of the Kundalini. I have noted much symbolic significance in what I have called my cane. It is more than a cane, it is my staff. I realize now that I did not need my staff because I had trouble walking, but that I had trouble walking because I needed my staff. Now I have found it and seen what it is, I do not need it to walk around, but I do need it for my journey. It was meant for me.

I have come to see my staff in the form of a serpent, the handle being the serpent head. The serpent is not an animal I would have picked out to associate myself with. The squirrel, the skunk, the Canadian goose, and the raccoon. Those have been the animals I have felt kinship with. But now I walk a new path. Not really new a new path, as I've always walked my path, it's just I realized before that I was walking.

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Today is the first day I have been able to take my staff outside since I sealed it with polyurethane 6 days ago. I put the coating on it so that I would not have to worry about taking it outside in the elements. I was worried that snow and rain would take their toll on it, and it would not be long before it crumbled of rot.

Putting the polyurethane on proved to be more adventure than I had anticipated. More accurately: putting the polyurethane on the staff was easy, getting it off myself was difficult. I don't have any paint thinner, and not much else works as a solvent for polyurethane. I tried water and soap. I tried rum. My hands were sticky and the stick was spreading. The brushes I placed in a plastic bowl of soapy water and I hope that they are still able to be fully cleaned when I do get paint thinner. However, my hands and my arms were my more immediate concern and I lacked the correct solvent.

It then occurred to me that there was another approach to solve the problem. I needed the polyurethane would take hold of rather than something that would take hold of the polyurethane: flour. I worked the flour over my hands and arms and between my fingers letting it form a thick paste with the polyurethane. That paste I could then simply scrape off my skin. It worked, and I am now free of the stick of the polyurethane. I will, however, make sure I have paint thinner on hand if I try this again, so that I can do the clean-up the proper way.

Fellow Bostonians: I just went for a short walk outside and I saw something I wasn't expecting. I saw stars and the moon!

I figured out where to hang my clothes to dry. It was pretty obvious, and it's a place I've hung clothes to dry many times before. My brain isn't functioning properly tonight. What else is new?

Some might say I should get out of my wet clothes and put some dry ones on. But, I don't have anywhere good to put my six layers of clothing to dry and I'm afraid of them moulding. I'm sitting in front of the fan and air drying them on me.

Not being able to get off the ground for 20 or 30 minutes is never very fun. It's especially not fun when you are outside. It's even more especially not fun when its pouring rain out.

Walking to the house_of_clocks from purpleglitter's apartment yesterday afternoon after the rains I kept seeing something quit strange. So strange that I'm not quite sure it was real. Ever so often a swarm of little tiny bubbles would fly up in front of me and I'd have to dodge them. It happened on the way back to purpleglitter's apartment, too. And again later when I left to see lady_babalon.

I truly believed that the bubbles were real. Even at this point I'm not convinced that they were an odd phenomenon caused by the rainwater interacting with something in the concrete of the sidewalk. Of course, I know that this isn't likely, especially since I only ever saw the bubbles right in front of me. However, the fact that I believed they were real makes it possible that the bubbles were some sort of psychotic feature. Psychotic features are supposed to be bad. But, I wonder if they are only bad if they get you in trouble. Me seeing the bubbles has caused myself and no one else any harm or distress.

And who knows? Maybe they were just færies just out for a good time.