My handy-dandy informational leaflet says that bergamot reduces stress, so I dripped some in the diffuser yesterday as I set out to finish a project. A few words about bergamot, and then the project.

I thought bergamot was some sort of geranium, because I sometimes make assumptions based on no logical evidence, like the rest of humankind. It sounded geranium-y, and since I just passed a guess-that-flower Facebook quiz with flying colors I was feeling kind of confident. Bergamot is actually a green citrus fruit that’s about the size of an orange. It can be used to make marmalade or, not surprisingly, perfume. Bergamot essential oil is used in about half of all women’s perfumes. When I looked up bergamot’s uses on WebMD, what I was told wasn’t what it’s good for, but what it’s not. It’s “possibly ineffective for: mental alertness” and there’s insufficient evidence that it reduces anxiety during radiation treatment.

So my research, and I can call three minutes of using my phone research because I make the blog rules, was inconclusive other than to say bergamot’s a potentially nice smelling orange. I mean, water is “possibly ineffective” for thirst if you don’t drink enough of it, and if you asked me if the calming vapors of bergamot worked while I was having radiation transmitted into my body I would probably give you the middle digit. You’re setting the bar pretty high for an orange if you expect it to have complete effectiveness in any realm, especially one involving that which made Spiderman cling to buildings and take on great power and great responsibility.

The bergamot did smell pretty, and I was relatively calm while I worked on my project. This was, incidentally, building the world’s smallest, most crooked desk. I’m creating a study in what was the storage room in our house. It is also a very tiny room, and it had become the exer-cycle of the house, everything thrown in there over its handlebars to be sorted later. I finally sorted it and now we can ride the bike, should we so choose.

Last weekend my boyfriend was attempting to do some work at the dining room table. He cleared off some Legos, put his headphones on, and started typing. My daughter was playing at the other end of the table, and my son was in the living room on his iPad. I jumped in the shower, and when I got out I could hear the kids chirping away like magpies in just-above-inside voices.

“Um,” I heard from outside the bathroom door, “I think I’m going to go to the library.”

I looked out and saw that my son and daughter had moved their toys directly beside the computer at the dining room table and were standing like Velcro around my boyfriend’s chair, chattering away, just wanting to be in his orbit. Adorable, and trying, in the way of an infant who will only sleep in your arms. So beautiful and heartwarming and you never want it to end and dammit it has to end because who’s going to wash these dishes and fold these clothes – or in this case write this meeting agenda – if I can’t get my ass in gear.

Hence, my assembling a desk. I’m confident in my assembling ability, much the same as the nine guys who are holding different parts of the elephant all feel confident that they know exactly what they are doing. Someone’s got a trunk and someone’s got a leg and someone’s got a tail and everyone’s right, except no one knows they have an elephant. I’m completely confident because I followed the instructions to a T and all of the holes lined up so it should all be right.

But the drawers are kind of too far to the left, and the cabinet door slams, and I think it’s too short for his legs to fit under, and the top slat of actual desk is damaged so it’s just perched on top while I wait for the replacement. So I really just have, like, all the parts of the elephant slammed together. Just don’t sneeze. The desk is so me – it’s a little too short and a little too squat and a little too left of center and beaten up. But serviceable. And it means well.

For the longest time I wouldn’t assemble things. I was completely terrified that I would ruin them. My ex-husband and I would get a new piece of furniture and take the pieces out of the box and my insides would seize up and I would want to be anywhere, anywhere – feeding spiders, corralling goats, fucking ironing, for God’s sake – anywhere but there. There was where I had to anticipate what piece he needed next. Or what tool to pass. Or when to read the instructions and when to hand them over. When to talk and when to be quiet. It got to where we would get something and I would declare that I was just going to be somewhere else in the house during assembly.

Why? It won’t be like that this time. You’ll be more helpful this time.

But I never was. I never learned what to anticipate.

It took me a long time to be in the room when my boyfriend built something. And then it took time to be able to look at what he was doing while I was in the room without feeling uncomfortable. And then it took time to be able to participate, when and if I wanted to, and realize that I didn’t have to anticipate. Eventually I worked my way up to offering advice. Which was accepted.

And now I can build on my own, which I love. I love operating a drill and I love using a butter knife as a flat head screwdriver. I love MacGyver’ing it. I love when I don’t have to MacGyver it, but I’m me, and that seems to be the way the cookie crumbles.

And so I have this tiny, crooked desk that I built stress-free, with the help of bergamot. Or maybe just with the help of time.

My money’s on time.

My mother used to have this cranky little Lhasa Apso with abandonment issues. Tipsie would sleep with one tiny leg extended over some part of my mom’s body while she slept, so she would know when my mom was leaving her. My two children are prone to this same tactic. I just woke up in the middle of my bed covered in limbs, two tiny bodies laying with arms and legs akimbo so I couldn’t leave without notice while they slept. They both sleep like they spent all day working on the railroad though, and disentanglement is usually not difficult.

Yesterday was a tough day for Ella, starting with the transition from her dad’s house to ours. She refused to leave, and told me that she didn’t know why she didn’t love me anymore, but that it had something to do with her dad, and that I wasn’t fun. I don’t doubt that I’m less fun. Our home isn’t constantly filled with other kids. I get frequent texts from their dad at our designated call time when they are with him that say that he is trying to corral them, but “there are a ton of kids here” or “it’s a madhouse”. I generally don’t hear back on those nights. I know that those kids are mainly older boys, and I picture Ella being younger, running more slowly, trying to play their games.

I finally discerned that this particular tantrum had something to do with the lack of Playmobil toys at our house, a situation I’m not likely to remedy quickly. First of all, I don’t have the money to buy the kids toys at the pace at which they would like, and secondly, I am trying to avoid being shiny-object-parent. I’m not comfortable with it, and Jesus, I’d never keep up.

I do like the Playmobil explosion. Ella has started watching these extremely age-appropriate YouTube videos about the Ricardo family (more on grown women playing with toys at another time) that are basically the NPR of their genre. Yesterday I overheard Dad Ricardo having a snack of delicious toast. And do you know what he thought would go great with delicious toast? Delicious water. He was so excited about delicious water. When he went to get delicious water, another Ricardo spied the delicious toast and ate it. Hilarity ensued.

I’m building up to the fact that it was the perfect day to arrive home and find that my essential oils had been delivered and I could start my experiment. Surely there was something in there that was calming – though Ella was now asleep and pretty damn calm. The diffuser was unobtrusive with its light colored wood, and the oils made me happy because they were neatly arranged in an, albeit cardboard, flat box. I like organization. It could have been better if all the labels had been facing outward, but geez, what kind of diva am I? The thing was forty dollars, for the love of Betty White.

The diffuser instructions suggested a lavender/frankincense combo for calming, and my friend who got me interested in this is always suggesting three drops of something, so I put three drops of each in the diffuser and started that puppy up. At first I put on the light but, whew, that thing is offensive. There is nothing calming about a light that reminds me of the third grade jelly shoes my mom used to buy for me at the drug store for $2.99. I turned the light off and the diffuser just steamed softly, with a little babbling water drip that made me feel like I had to use the bathroom pretty frequently as the night wore on.

It also made me house smell like every apartment I ever made out in during college. Not necessarily unpleasant – more like an awkward nostalgia. College brings back worn couches and cheap beer and indoor temperatures that were always slightly too warm or too cold. I was always a bit too drunk. I think we all were, but some people didn’t notice, or for most it was just college. It brought back bad food and always being a bit behind schedule. It also brought back amazing times with amazing friends. I remember my friend Jeff remarking that some people have a group of friends, and some people have a larger club. We had a crowd.

I don’t know if the oils being diffused calmed me. Ella slept. Finn played on his iPad. I did some laundry. But when I woke up this morning the first thing I noticed was that my pajamas smelled terrific. Like, really fabulously clean and good-morning-y. But then I remembered that I put them on upstairs, so they weren’t around my diffused air, and that I had used a new fabric softener sample that I got in the mail.

So better luck with the next one.

I’m grateful for my job – for what working gives me, for the people I am lucky enough to work amongst, and for the people whom I am lucky enough to serve. I’ve been at DCMH for 16 years this week. Working is one of the best things I can do for my health. It gives me routine, and purpose, and shows me how fortunate I am. Linking individuals with serious mental illness to services in the public mental health system is a difficult and rewarding proposition – you see the gaps way more than you see the supports we are trying to provide people. I am lucky enough to have a network of providers who consistently do more with less, appreciate their jobs more than their jobs are appreciated by the public, and are willing to work for a smile. Because that’s, hopefully, what we’re aiming for anyway. This is social work, folks, lord knows we aren’t in it for a paycheck.

I am lucky enough to have an amazing office full of co-workers whom I love. I’m able to walk through the doors every morning with a smile on my face because I know who is on the other side. We laugh and we yell (to each other, not at each other) and we understand each other, for the most part. As for the other parts, we’re willing to work on it. My co-workers have watched me grow up. They’ve seen me get engaged, lose everything in a fire, get married, get my masters, buy a house, move upward through the ranks, have two children, traverse a bitter divorce, fall in love for what turns out to be the first time in my life, lose my mind and find it again (frequently). I am grateful for them.

I am grateful for the individuals I serve. I get cursed at and cried on and God-blessed on a daily basis. I am lucky enough to have seen people rebuild lives from less than scratch, without a sideways glance through the struggle, doing what they have to do. More often, what I see is an individual in crisis, with a makeshift village around him, from the bodega owner who gives out a free sandwich to the treatment provider who overlooks missed appointments to keep a client on her caseload. I see people who are thankful and thankless and blank, and I try my best to understand them all. Who would I be if I were in that place? I am grateful that I see life in all of its guts and glory, and I try to appreciate all of it.