It went like this.

So here I am, gazing out at the sun dazzling the water, sipping zinfandel on the deck, and feeling anxiously hopped OUT OF MY MIND.

There are So Many Things To Be Stressed About.

For one thing, I do not understand the garbage here.  There is no recycling.  I find this deeply distressing.

I’d like to pretend that it’s because I love the dolphins so much, and the turtles, but really it’s because I’m afraid that there actually IS recycling, a secret and mysterious code of recycling, but I’m missing it somehow, and I’ll get it wrong and my new neighbors will wake me up at 5am and make me sort through my shameful trash in my bathrobe on the street as they glare and tsk tsk about how I mixed the glass right in with the plastic like a total slut, while the ominous crows circle overhead.

Oh wait!  That only happens in Tokyo.

But there are other problems, big ones.  Something is happening with my phone.  It seems to have been taken over by aliens.  It keeps taking me to places that DO NOT EXIST.

I typed in the name of a grocery store, and my simpering little map program announced every single turn so proudly–

in five hundred feet, turn right–

and then, dear reader, it led me astray.

It said, Arrived at destination! – so proud! so satisfied! so vaguely trans-Atlantic!

But I was not at my destination.

My intended destination did not include pale blue siding and a rusty boat.

Where were the groceries?????

They were around the corner, it turned out, but it was a totally different supermarket chain.  I KNOW.  It’s a government conspiracy for sure.

I am quite rattled by all this.

I know it’s silly.  But then it’s also silly how I am always terrified of calling the insurance company. And how intimidated I am by the vibrant, virtuous women who run the school attendance office. (They’re so nice.  They scare me.)

All I can tell you is that mixed in with the utter joyful hedonism of being at the coast is a thread of total primal anxiety.

This is because (and this will come as no surprise to you) I am absolutely crazy.

I thought for a long time that this was my big secret, my big shameful oozing sore. But it turns out that everyone is just as crazy as me. (Except you of course; I’m sure you’re eminently sane.)  One of the great gifts of being an alchemist (aka life coach), aside from the smart, hilarious, soulful women I get to talk to every week, is that I get a front row seat on just how crazy everybody is.

No, really. We’re all NUTS.

So while part of me is thoroughly relaxing and soaking up beauty, another part of me is wildly freaking out over all the strange nighttime sounds of this house that isn’t mine, and wondering if I’ve locked the door correctly, and worrying whether I’m going to break the dishwasher by running it at the wrong temperature, and mourning because I let the unfamiliar refrigerator freeze my just-purchased vegetables.

Plus, I don’t know how to use their washer!  And I can’t find the mailbox!  And the steep driveway wrecks my nerves!

So the sole purpose of today’s dispatch is to let you know that if you feel too sensitive to live, or too crazy to get through the day, or too ruined for color TV, then sweetheart, you’re in good company.

As Ram Dass apparently said, we’re all just walking each other home.

Here I am out of my comfort zone, out of my routine, watching all my crazy bloom bright and riotous.

And I find it kind of endearing.  That’s what happens when you do a LOT of therapy, and even more life coaching.