Author Archives: Natasha Shapiro, ATR-BC, LCAT

I always feel pretty good about myself when I relocate a spider from the house to the garden. But the experience probably feels different for the …

CONVERSATION WITH A SPIDER

I usually forget the phrase self checkout. It’s that self thing at the grocery store where you do the machine on your own. I often forget the word Cashier. As a kid I wanted to be a cashier. It was probably my first job choice before I stopped wanting any grown up jobs. I miss the cashiers at Whole Foods (otherwise known as Whole Paycheck). The self checkout is not usually fun because I am not a cashier and my ADHD makes my cashiering a brain maze. Of course I like the bar code making the noise, but I scan items in any order and then I have to throw them in my bags or in the cart with my bags, usually the latter. Life is hard enough when people are waiting for you to do something and impatient. I didn’t ask for that at the grocery store. I can get the stuff on my list and go around and back when on my own. Trying to do someone else’s job that they do much better is a disaster for me. I know it’s lazy and that I could just use the supposedly simple method everyone else uses, I guess. I suppose they scan the heavier items first to get them in their bags the quickest and then the lighter ones. Probably other simple rules apply. I never got cashier training and I would be a terrible cashier. Now there is a cash machine toy for little kids to play with. I wish I could have had that toy as a child, a plastic cashier machine, whatever those are called. You get to push some numbers and push a button and there are the rows separating the coins and you hear the cling when you open the door. It comes with fake coins and bills. I would have loved playing that. I did get to play that as a grownup with kid.s Anyway, my favorite thing at not self checking out is seeing the person who is the cashier and looking at their name tags and interesting unique parts of their uniforms, like one person and a ton of buttons on her apron that said all kinds of things. At Whole Foods almost everyone had really cool names. I wish I had written them down. They also had all kinds of other cool things you can’t ask about because eventually you seem crazy and you’re interfering with their job.

So I used to say, “How do you say your name or I love your name and I love your nails. About two things, one a quick question and the other a quick observation. Then shut up while you wonder about this person checking out your groceries and knowing exactly where to put what in the bags. There is the bar separating your stuff from someone else’s. I can’t find out more about the person. When I’m getting my hair cut I have no interest in finding out anything about the person cutting my hair and don’t want them to talk to me. It’s totally different then because getting your hair washed and cut is a relaxing experience. Also people working as a cashier probably have a much more complicated life because they make so much less money. And now what are they supposed to do to make money when self checkouts have replaced them. They lose their health insurance and whatever other slight perks they might get from the grocery store.

I knew someone who worked in the bakery at Whole Foods. Now she has her own company making choclolate barks and seems to be doing well with it. I think she had a relatively senior job at the bakery because she had a lot of experience. I remember bumping into her once and asking about some kind of option that involved some effort at being healthy.

Anyway my point is that I don’t like Self Check Out. What if your’e tired? I’m fast at reading and other stuff but not things like checkout. Yesterday I felt rushed and put something heavy on top of potato chips. I heard them crunch. I dump some stuff in bags and some in the cart and go to the side to take my time filling the bags. I don’t want people jobs to disappear, whether they are just a summer or temporary job some college student is doing or a person is doing it five days a week to survive. And the baggers.

Being a kid now going to the grocery store maybe the self check out seems fun but they don’t get the full experience.

I’m back into knitting from using this poncho I made years ago that I was using as a layer when the boiler at work broke on the three coldest days last week:

So I decided to try making another smaller one and got going making pieces. I don’t know how to follow a pattern and make what is in the photo. People can’t accept when you explain your limitations. They don’t get that I can start origami and by step 3 Or 4 I know I can’t do it. oh it’s not hard you just follow the pattern. It just requires patience. No no no. It requires a different brain. My ADHD makes it impossible for me to do those sequential types of art. I can’t and never will. It’s like asking a blind person to open their eyes wider.

Anyway like I’m most art my skill comes from using my ADHD to just go with a process. I like knitting with two yarns at once and creating the effect of painting with yarn. I know I want a poncho shape so I’m using the poncho I made in like 2006 as the guide for the shape. I can see I’ve gotten worse at controlling the shape so this new poncho will look much less organized than the one where I somehow pieced together long triangles. It tells me my ADHD has gotten worse.

But I like the idea of a mini poncho so I’m going to make a quilt like one and see how it turns out. I’ll be working on the top to add more stitches as I go to make it get bigger as it goes done and somehow there’s a weird shape sticking out.

The other thing with using two weird yarns is nobody sees your mistakes purling half a row then knitting and mixing it all up. Those are all the stitches I know and please don’t ask me to learn any other stitches. I have a learning disability. Everywhere it says ADHD is not a learning disability but they’re wrong anyway, the experts too. If you teach me something I’ll do it wrong anyway. I still am not sure which way to cut an apple but probably could do it right because frustrated people have demonstrated it a million times.

What about putting things in different places all the time and misplacing them? That’s a learning problem.

And you pointing out that there would be a very different kind of affair showing up soon reminding me of the multiple meanings of the word.

I have been writing morning pages wherever. This weekend was pretty bad so I wrote a bunch of stuff and then tore it up. That’s a great one for when you’re feeling high energy depressed then completely unmotivated and exhausted by the idea of taking a subway uptown. I didn’t do much. I hardly left the house except to go grocery shopping.

I also had that thing that a few people might empathize with where you feel terrible and at the same time you don’t want to feel better. It sounds ridiculous but it happens. It’s hard to describe. It’s hard for people around you to watch you obviously in a mood. I confess to being the moodiest person in the house.

Today again it was freezing at work. I bought one crappy space heater yesterday that sucked so I returned it and went to Bed Bath and Beyond and got a Vornado that wasn’t very expensive but they make good space heaters.

The space heater was warm but I still had two blankets, a knitted poncho, my hat, scarf and gloves and mittens. I must have been sitting on the floor hardly moving all day. Tonight I did a long workout.

Anyway I can’t wait for these morning night pages to be real writing. This is more like brushing your teeth kind of writing.

I was struck with a wonderful feeling of gratitude during the day that was real.

I am trying to start a real website I already paid for, from WordPress, only 4$ month. I had an art website on Otherpeoplespixels a few years ago but it’s 16$ month and a pain in the ass to do.

I’m staying in this site for now to do morning pages. If I make that a website to post a lot of art, then the blog can’t be very personal and I’ll need this blog for doing the morning pages. I’m really at a wall, bored with everything. I e been using Nike Training Club app for 3 years and all the new stuff is beginner and I’ve done all Kirsty Godso ‘s workouts and programs a million times. I actually asked her what to do in Instagram and she answered very quickly.

So I looked at some free apps but as soon as I start looking at their stuff it’s annoying and I go back to NTC. My other choice is I have “Insanity” workouts on my computer that I started way before the app or pandemic. I did a few and stopped as I wasn’t into working out back then.

The main thing I get from working out is I get depressed and bored and working out usually changes my mood. Like now I’m in a bad mood as I feel sick from binge watching Dead to Me on Netflix. There’s a reason they use the word binge. You feel bored and disgusted with yourself and don’t want to keep watching but nothing else is appealing either and I lost all my energy. I was going to read, clean, workout, cook, draw and I’m sitting on the couch doing nothing.

There’s nothing much to look forward to. Everything is the same. Work is the same. Being at home is the same with the same things to do besides hanging out with my 14 year old which is always interesting as everything is new and surprising or when it’s not hanging out with her is just great no matter what. But she’s busy and has her own busy social life. I don’t have a social life. Not much. Every Sunday I zoom or meet up with 2 friends I had coffee and did yoga Sundays before the pandemic.

There is cleaning and organizing to do. Our dishwasher is broken so there’s always dishes to wash. We were having a slightly regular home cleaner in the fall but the pandemic keeps getting in the way. I hate cleaning. I don’t have to do it all of course. The bathroom is my thing and I hate it.

My life is basically completely repetitive. I’m sick of my drawings and paintings. I have no sales or shows or anything about my artist career to look forward to. I’m sick of watching other fictional people have lives on Netflix when I’m supposed to be living my own life.

What the fuck is there to do. I can’t read for long. I’m bored with everything. Bored bored bored.

I was bored a lot when I was a kid, almost all the time except when I was with a friend. Otherwise I just read books. There was no tv or internet so there wasn’t much else to do except the summers that were fun as we always traveled.

Ok m going to Whole Foods to get stuff. There’s at least football playoffs to watch.

I have reached that fork in the road where I’ve used all the space in my other blog, titled, “Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast”, directly lifted for Through the Looking Glass”. So out of necessity, I’m starting a new blog; it’s kind of a carryover and I hope you will move with me and follow this new blog. Even though I didn’t choose to make a new blog, I also didn’t choose to move to a new studio, so, new year, new blog. Maybe there will be something new that develops from this blog.

I’m doing my morning pages in here to post daily as I was doing before until it became impossible to post. This is one of my impossible things for breakfast. Let’s eat this new blog for breakfast. Let’s enjoy it’s sweet taste, much like my favorite chocolate chip cookie.

Number 2: there’s a huge base in my apartment right here that would be hard to consume but it’s beautiful. Yum

Number 3: my sun clock

Number 4: 2 mini chocolate croissants. Usually it’s impossible not to have 5 of them…

Number 5: my tiredness and hatred of morning. I eat this whole f$7&@:;ing morning.

Number 6: my latest Tik Tok video. I think I’m one of the oldest “Tik Toker”. Can I post it here? Let’s see. Yes here it is

Since I can’t count pages here, I’m writing for 15 minutes. The usual applies. Here’s my warning: if you’re a former or especially a current client, don’t read this blog. I not responsible for you finding out your art therapist is this shocking clumsy mess of a human. Full Disclosure: you will find out things you don’t want to know. The video above covers this topic. As a therapist I prefer you knowing as little as possible about me.

Im your therapist. If you’re here, stop reading and go make your art or journal for yourself and remember, you’re the one in therapy with me. It’s about you. This here blog is my happy place to write about me.

This is the photo of the curtain of therapy that comes between you and my private life so please go away. I’ll see you at your appointment for focusing on you and maybe discussing the “Wag The Dog” you’re doing by Reade this

I have ADHD. There. If you got this far, don’t go any further. Did you really want to know that???