The best I can describe it is that my head feels like it's constantly running around in circles. Circles within circles.
There's the self-loathing circle. I don't mean "low self-esteem." I mean LOATHING. This is where I hate, detest, despise myself and my horrible qualities-- my inability to function socially, my incompetence at jobs, my failure to hold myself together, my insufferable whining, my inexcusable laziness, my tendency to alternately snap at my husband and withdraw completely instead of communicating openly and calmly like we'd sworn to do with each other, etc. etc. etc. etc. This is where I hate the person I am, the person I've become, the person I will be. It alternates between cold bleak and utter despair, and this horrible tearing screeching bitter anger. I want to fall asleep and never wake up, scratch bloody holes in my skin, drive off the side of a cliff. It feels like a black roiling pulsating mass, a cracked open bleeding red angry crevasse, the thick gobbets of black blood that spatter the floor of a gory murder scene. It feels like something you watch out of morbid fascination, knowing it is horrible and malignant and poisonous but you can't look away.
There's the "Oh now, stop being silly" circle. I keep telling myself that I AM being silly, that nothing about me is anywhere near as bad as I think it is. I berate myself for succumbing to that deep, dark part of me that LIKES the pain, the weakness, the misery. I call myself "coward." This is the part of me that wants to be strong, that feels nothing but contempt for my own weakness. The "tough love" part that hates the whining, that rails against my helpless cries of "I don't know what to do anymore!" and "I need a shrink and pills!" because OF COURSE I know what to do, I just don't do it, and if I need a shrink, why aren't I making an appointment with one? Of course, ironically, this part of me hates myself too. I goad myself to exercise more, start a project that will engage and involve me, find a volunteer position, find a second job, take a class, eat better, any of the hoarde of coping mechanisms I have built up over the years, and then when I don't do them, out of laziness, lack of money, lack of drive, or whatever perverse imp depression uses to make you not want to do the things you enjoy doing (psst, it's called "anhedonia"), I berate myself for yet another failed attempt. Maybe I really am worthless. Maybe I really am a horrible person, if I can't even do that. Maybe I'm not even worth my own self-directed contempt.
There's the See-Saw circle. Oh Dina, be gentler on yourself-- depression really messes with your head. But is it depression? Or is it laziness? Am I using depression as a blind for simply being lazy? Am I using the label to make it okay to snap at my husband, not do the necessary housework, lie on the couch in my pajamas and bathrobe re-reading books I've read a thousand times over? What is really the issue here? Am I mentally ill? Or just an irreparably flawed person? Is it me, or everyone else? Am I failing to do anything to fix my problem because of the anhedonia, or because deep down I LIKE being depressed? Should I try to talk to someone about it? But who would I talk to? I ask so many questions of myself, trying to balance out the schooling I've had about depression with the instincts and very vivid feelings of what's inside my own mind. My logic wars endlessly with my emotions, and though I hate philosophy I can't help but indulge in it.
There's the "Mouse running in little circles" circle. Like the previous one, only incoherent. I think to myself, "If I talk to Husband, he will only tell me what I should be doing and is no doubt sick of hearing my whining and will discourage me from going on pills and will say we have to money for me to go to a shrink and they'll just tell me to go on pills anyway and he'll leave me if I keep acting this way and I'm so co-dependent and what the hell would I even do if he left me and I resent him for so much, for no baby and for saying we shouldn't have more than one cat and for not doing as much housework and for not being supportive and for keeping me here in the country which I love and all but there's no jobs and for always interrupting me when I'm reading or looking at something online and for being paranoid and for bitching about how everything I eat is so unhealthy and for being right a lot of times and why am I ? I should just not talk at all, since it's my problem and anyway I don't have many (or any) people to talk to and it's just whining or is it whining or actual valid pain and I will be perceived as snobby and strange for being so untalkative but if I talk I sound like an idiot or like I really want to run away and I'll be boring" and on and on it goes. I'm constantly adjusting what I think to appease the different sides of me, what other people might think, what other people DO think, and I never reconcile anything. It constantly moves, constantly changes, like a sped-up tape.
And there's...Miscellaneous.
--Anxiety about my job.
--Simply not enjoying my job anymore.
--Resentment about everything I can't/don't have.
--Desperate loneliness that never seems to be assuaged.
--Disliking my body and hair and skin.
--Anxiety about my health (and yes, there is an issue I'm a little concerned about).
And all these circles are constantly running together and flowing together and making one swiftly-moving current of jumbled misery and anger and bitterness and shame and fear.
I fear that as I withdraw, talk less, smile less, I am only retreating further and further into madness.
I fear that I'm doing exactly the opposite of what I need to do.
I fear that if I try to do anything about it I will get shot down, or fail, AGAIN.
I fear that someday I might do something bad to myself.
About that last. I don't want to. But I do. I do think about it. I think about how to do it. I don't think I could use many of the current "accepted" methods. And my mind quails from the idea of how...finding me, or having to hear about me from the police, or even just finding out I'd done it, would devastate and emotionally wreck my husband, my family, the friends I have left. It's the last that really keeps me from doing it.
And so I fear that out of fear I will keep driving people away, until one day I am so alone that I WILL do it.
Of course, I can't think of not being able to taste good food, or feel pleasure, or drink in the sun, or visit Japan if I want, or feel water on my skin, or read, or sing, or sew, or make pretty things, or pet my cat, or snuggle with my husband again. There are still things I enjoy, even if it's mostly in the abstract right now.
And so I won't do it. "Never say never," and all, but I take that a day at a time. That's all I can do. My current stance is, "No, I don't want to die...but when it comes on its own, a minute or a century from now, I'll be welcoming it with open arms."
I think I maybe can fix that someday. I hope.
I really need to start now.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
When it rains, it pours! Also both TMI and NSFW. Because words are dirty, dirty things.
So when I remember my blog and get up the wherewithal to write in it, I always remember about a gajillion things that might be good to write about. So the lucky world gets about twenty entries at a time instead of just one.
It's like the cookies I bake. I never bake cookies. Except when I bake a thousand of them. Then I eat them all within a couple of days. But...well, that's a different point.
Anyway.
I'm going to talk about periods.
Because talking about not writing enough in my blog is a perfect segue into talking about bleeding from my crotch. Ahem. Might be a sign to stop reading if you don't want to get up close and personal with my vagina.
VAGINA!!!!!!!
Ahem.
I've been thinking about trying some of the non-disposable methods for dealing with good ol' Aunt Flow for a while now. It just kind of depresses me when I'm dealing with the crimson tide and our trashcans pile up with my neatly-wrapped bundles of gore, to be sent directly to the landfill where they will undoubtedly linger for millenia in their virgin state of non-biodegradble-ness.
Plus, five bucks a month to help destroy the environment adds up, particularly when you're trying to be frugal about it and all.
I read up on cloth pads-- making them myself, that is, not buying them-- and since my lack of finishing projects is pretty much a running theme in this blog, I'm sure we all know how that went. Actually, it went as far as me getting the materials and cutting them out before realizing that holy shit, I need a lot of material for even one measly pad and it's financially sounder (poor grammar, sorry) to just buy them.
Except they seem so expensive! Argh. It's hard to get past the whole "invest the money NOW and reap the benefits later" when the money NOW seems like such a lot, especially when I'd have to replace them regularly (like every six months or so) anyway.
Then I read about the DivaCup. I'd known about them for a while, known how they worked and how so many women raved about the Diva and other menstrual cups. They are made of silicon, which you can reuse and which is biodegradable, they last for-frickin'-ever apparently if you take proper care of them (like, years), and though they cost about $32 dollars or so, they'd pay for themselves within about six months.
Plus, you can wear them for much longer, over night even, you don't have to wear a bulky pad, you don't leak if they're inserted properly, and you don't have to carry around tons of supplies.
However, I'd never quite gotten reconciled to the idea of shoving a large object up my vagina multiple times a day, nor the idea of having to get up close and personal with my cooter to get the thing out again. I don't even like using tampons for that reason-- they're weird-feeling, and I'm kinda terrified of the idea of Toxic Shock Syndrome.
This last month, though, I leaked through my pad and onto my pajamas not once, but twice. It was as I was washing the blood out of my favorite jeans that I decided "Fuck it. I'll just have to get over the insertion fear, because this is honestly the best thing financially and environmentally. Plus the whole not-having-to-wash-blood-out-of-my-pants thing."
I bought it. I brought it home.
It was hard to insert. It's bigger and more solid than it looks, and it kept getting caught either on my pubic bone or in the mighty clench of my vaginal muscles. Finally it went in, though. It felt...mostly okay. A little...odd. My inside-y parts felt a little sore, much like there was a large foreign object inside me (imagine that!).
I don't know if anyone else experiences this, but when I have any sort of medical procedure on a body part, like I get a shot in my shoulder, I feel sort of intensely weird about using that body part afterward. I always made them give me my shots in my right arm, so if I had to write something I wouldn't have to worry, and I never wanted to eat anything after I'd gotten my teeth cleaned. I felt the same way about this; I was due to work out that day, but I felt strange about jostling about with a silicone cup inside my vagina. So I didn't.
Anyway, once I got the cup in, it immediately got, um, sucked up inside me. The instructions said to leave the stem (basically a silicone "tail" that lets you grab it) no more than half an inch inside, but obviously it didn't stay there. I kept the cup in for a while. It worked fine; I didn't leak once I'd gotten it properly adjusted, though I did wonder how it would work getting it out.
Oh my god. Getting it out. It was SO WEIRD. I squatted. I bore down like I was giving birth. I stuck my fingers WAY up inside myself (and I don't do that! Ever!) and waggled them around trying to get a finger-hold. Finally after about twenty minutes of doing my best not to panic, I grabbed what little I could grab of the tail, dug my fingernails in, and pulled for all I was worth. They said the suction was necessary to preventing leaks. They were not kidding about the thrice-damned suction. And if shoving a silicone cup inside you felt strange, the sensation of yanking it back out again, complete with the sensation of yanking your vagina along with it, is about ten times stranger!
I did NOT like that sensation. But I refused to give up. I'd invested my money and I'd be damned if I didn't get my money's worth. So after washing it out in the sink (really not that disgusting), I put it back in. It went a *little* easier this time, but not easier enough to make me really want to repeat the experience.
Later, rinse, repeat for my next time. Unpleasant.
Then I promptly went to the internet and looked up tips on making removal easier.
Good thing I did! I learned that peeing just before removal lowers it in my vaginal canal and makes it much easier. I also learned that for some women, later in their periods the Cup rides higher up, and this was probably my issue since I'd started using it on day 3 or so of my period.
So the next evening, dreading it, I went in, peed, and...voila! It was like a miracle! I got it out, washed, and back in within about five minutes. It was a HUGE relief, let me tell you, because it seriously was feeling like I was getting a pelvic exam every twelve hours, and that was not cool.
I was told by a girl I know that the first month is always awkward, but afterward you will never go back. I don't know if I can say "NEVER" with confidence, but I like to feel I've made a start.
It's like the cookies I bake. I never bake cookies. Except when I bake a thousand of them. Then I eat them all within a couple of days. But...well, that's a different point.
Anyway.
I'm going to talk about periods.
Because talking about not writing enough in my blog is a perfect segue into talking about bleeding from my crotch. Ahem. Might be a sign to stop reading if you don't want to get up close and personal with my vagina.
VAGINA!!!!!!!
Ahem.
I've been thinking about trying some of the non-disposable methods for dealing with good ol' Aunt Flow for a while now. It just kind of depresses me when I'm dealing with the crimson tide and our trashcans pile up with my neatly-wrapped bundles of gore, to be sent directly to the landfill where they will undoubtedly linger for millenia in their virgin state of non-biodegradble-ness.
Plus, five bucks a month to help destroy the environment adds up, particularly when you're trying to be frugal about it and all.
I read up on cloth pads-- making them myself, that is, not buying them-- and since my lack of finishing projects is pretty much a running theme in this blog, I'm sure we all know how that went. Actually, it went as far as me getting the materials and cutting them out before realizing that holy shit, I need a lot of material for even one measly pad and it's financially sounder (poor grammar, sorry) to just buy them.
Except they seem so expensive! Argh. It's hard to get past the whole "invest the money NOW and reap the benefits later" when the money NOW seems like such a lot, especially when I'd have to replace them regularly (like every six months or so) anyway.
Then I read about the DivaCup. I'd known about them for a while, known how they worked and how so many women raved about the Diva and other menstrual cups. They are made of silicon, which you can reuse and which is biodegradable, they last for-frickin'-ever apparently if you take proper care of them (like, years), and though they cost about $32 dollars or so, they'd pay for themselves within about six months.
Plus, you can wear them for much longer, over night even, you don't have to wear a bulky pad, you don't leak if they're inserted properly, and you don't have to carry around tons of supplies.
However, I'd never quite gotten reconciled to the idea of shoving a large object up my vagina multiple times a day, nor the idea of having to get up close and personal with my cooter to get the thing out again. I don't even like using tampons for that reason-- they're weird-feeling, and I'm kinda terrified of the idea of Toxic Shock Syndrome.
This last month, though, I leaked through my pad and onto my pajamas not once, but twice. It was as I was washing the blood out of my favorite jeans that I decided "Fuck it. I'll just have to get over the insertion fear, because this is honestly the best thing financially and environmentally. Plus the whole not-having-to-wash-blood-out-of-my-pants thing."
I bought it. I brought it home.
It was hard to insert. It's bigger and more solid than it looks, and it kept getting caught either on my pubic bone or in the mighty clench of my vaginal muscles. Finally it went in, though. It felt...mostly okay. A little...odd. My inside-y parts felt a little sore, much like there was a large foreign object inside me (imagine that!).
I don't know if anyone else experiences this, but when I have any sort of medical procedure on a body part, like I get a shot in my shoulder, I feel sort of intensely weird about using that body part afterward. I always made them give me my shots in my right arm, so if I had to write something I wouldn't have to worry, and I never wanted to eat anything after I'd gotten my teeth cleaned. I felt the same way about this; I was due to work out that day, but I felt strange about jostling about with a silicone cup inside my vagina. So I didn't.
Anyway, once I got the cup in, it immediately got, um, sucked up inside me. The instructions said to leave the stem (basically a silicone "tail" that lets you grab it) no more than half an inch inside, but obviously it didn't stay there. I kept the cup in for a while. It worked fine; I didn't leak once I'd gotten it properly adjusted, though I did wonder how it would work getting it out.
Oh my god. Getting it out. It was SO WEIRD. I squatted. I bore down like I was giving birth. I stuck my fingers WAY up inside myself (and I don't do that! Ever!) and waggled them around trying to get a finger-hold. Finally after about twenty minutes of doing my best not to panic, I grabbed what little I could grab of the tail, dug my fingernails in, and pulled for all I was worth. They said the suction was necessary to preventing leaks. They were not kidding about the thrice-damned suction. And if shoving a silicone cup inside you felt strange, the sensation of yanking it back out again, complete with the sensation of yanking your vagina along with it, is about ten times stranger!
I did NOT like that sensation. But I refused to give up. I'd invested my money and I'd be damned if I didn't get my money's worth. So after washing it out in the sink (really not that disgusting), I put it back in. It went a *little* easier this time, but not easier enough to make me really want to repeat the experience.
Later, rinse, repeat for my next time. Unpleasant.
Then I promptly went to the internet and looked up tips on making removal easier.
Good thing I did! I learned that peeing just before removal lowers it in my vaginal canal and makes it much easier. I also learned that for some women, later in their periods the Cup rides higher up, and this was probably my issue since I'd started using it on day 3 or so of my period.
So the next evening, dreading it, I went in, peed, and...voila! It was like a miracle! I got it out, washed, and back in within about five minutes. It was a HUGE relief, let me tell you, because it seriously was feeling like I was getting a pelvic exam every twelve hours, and that was not cool.
I was told by a girl I know that the first month is always awkward, but afterward you will never go back. I don't know if I can say "NEVER" with confidence, but I like to feel I've made a start.
Inn a Tight Spot (hyuk hyuk)
Last weekend the bed-and-breakfast I temp at occasionally had a full house due to a wedding, and since this was likely to be the last chance to work this season, I let them schedule me for all three days.
Let me tell you about my weekend. Worth it for the money, yeah, but OH MY GOD EXHAUSTING.
On Friday I worked the librarian gig from 8 to 2, then went home for an hour, then left to run around clearing tables and passing drinks to rowdy drunken wedding guests for seven hours.
Then I woke up on Saturday after five hours of sleep, and ran around taking orders and clearing tables for five more hours.
Then immediately after THAT, I met up with Husband and we promptly drove to Asheville to do errands, which involved (you guessed it) MORE running around, and driving, and standing, which are all very exhausting activities when you've been doing practically nothing but that for the last twenty-four hours. We got back around 8 pm, leaving me two hours before I had to go to sleep in order to:
Wake up at 6am again and run around taking orders and clearing tables for five MORE hours.
THEN I had to go home and cook. Slaving over a hot stove for hours. To make delicious and healthy food for my family (that is, me and Husband). BECAUSE I CARE. *sob*
Oh my god. I am too darn old for this shit. I felt like warmed-over, nauseous, achy-kneed HELL by Sunday morning, and I broke my long caffeine fast with about 2346238 cups of coffee, which were NECESSARY and MEDICINAL. I'm thankful to have the chance to earn extra money and all, but if there is a next time, you can bet two things will be happening:
1) We will NOT be going to Asheville, and
2) Husband will be doing the goddamn cooking.
That is all.
Let me tell you about my weekend. Worth it for the money, yeah, but OH MY GOD EXHAUSTING.
On Friday I worked the librarian gig from 8 to 2, then went home for an hour, then left to run around clearing tables and passing drinks to rowdy drunken wedding guests for seven hours.
Then I woke up on Saturday after five hours of sleep, and ran around taking orders and clearing tables for five more hours.
Then immediately after THAT, I met up with Husband and we promptly drove to Asheville to do errands, which involved (you guessed it) MORE running around, and driving, and standing, which are all very exhausting activities when you've been doing practically nothing but that for the last twenty-four hours. We got back around 8 pm, leaving me two hours before I had to go to sleep in order to:
Wake up at 6am again and run around taking orders and clearing tables for five MORE hours.
THEN I had to go home and cook. Slaving over a hot stove for hours. To make delicious and healthy food for my family (that is, me and Husband). BECAUSE I CARE. *sob*
Oh my god. I am too darn old for this shit. I felt like warmed-over, nauseous, achy-kneed HELL by Sunday morning, and I broke my long caffeine fast with about 2346238 cups of coffee, which were NECESSARY and MEDICINAL. I'm thankful to have the chance to earn extra money and all, but if there is a next time, you can bet two things will be happening:
1) We will NOT be going to Asheville, and
2) Husband will be doing the goddamn cooking.
That is all.
So tired.
Well, okay, my two-week project was a success for its duration, for the most part anyway.
I worked out more. Then I kind of got sick, and one day I think I just slept instead of exercising. But! Sleeping does burn calories, so, I dunno, maybe it counts?
I didn't eat any more sugar. Well, except for the ketchup. Then the instant the two weeks was over, I kinda went hog wild and ate soft-serve and M&Ms and cake and those mallow-creme pumpkins that you only get around Halloween and oh yeah, I failed.
No caffeine or alcohol. Not that this was so difficult.
Amazingly enough, I made it without pretzels. I had my raisins and my sunflower seeds, and honestly, I just didn't snack much. I ate ACTUAL food at meals instead. Astonishing!
Now the two weeks has been over for a while and I may as well not have bothered. We still walk to the mail sometimes, but it's been cold and rainy so as regular exercise it's a bust. I've eaten tons of sugar. I've had some caffeine because of massive amounts of inn-working, which I shall describe later, and even a touch of alcohol. The instant the two weeks was over, I went out and bought a bag of pretzels, though admittedly I didn't buy one this week and I might just keep up that pattern.
And I've been deeeeepressed again. Hurray!
They say the body remembers things long after our minds have forgotten them, gotten over them, simply not thought about them for ages.
Both my aunt and my mother feel inexplicably depressed in the spring, despite the fact that they both love the spring, the holidays and flowers and foods. This is because their mother passed away then, nearly forty years ago, suddenly and without closure. It took my aunt going to a therapist to figure out that's what it was.
My cousin always feels horrible to the day of her traumatic break-up with her ex-boyfriend several years ago. She never quite remembers it, always just wonders why she feels so crappy, until she goes back and re-reads her blog from years past.
I hate that my own traumatic experience with my job and my boss was happening last year this time. I love the fall. I mean, I hate it because it means the winter is right around the corner and I detest being cold, but I love it because it's beautiful. It's got my favorite seasonal foods and bright colors and wonderful smells everywhere.
But now I keep remembering how awful I was feeling last year at this time. I keep trying to remember that I should be jumping for joy that I'm NOT THERE ANYMORE. My body refuses to listen. I think that's really the only reason I'm feeling this right now. There's no other real reason.
I feel like I'm getting more paranoid, shutting myself in a lot more. I feel like my brain is refusing to let words out, and my face is showing everyone how scared I am, how needy, how desperate. I feel like living every-day life, which involves talking to people and being around people and having to measure up to what my job requires of me and the like, is almost intolerable sometimes. I feel like I will never be good enough, never be able to open up, never be wanted or cared about, never be worth anything, never be anything other than a trembling fetal ball of repressed fear.
I wonder if, when January rolls around, this will change any.
I worked out more. Then I kind of got sick, and one day I think I just slept instead of exercising. But! Sleeping does burn calories, so, I dunno, maybe it counts?
I didn't eat any more sugar. Well, except for the ketchup. Then the instant the two weeks was over, I kinda went hog wild and ate soft-serve and M&Ms and cake and those mallow-creme pumpkins that you only get around Halloween and oh yeah, I failed.
No caffeine or alcohol. Not that this was so difficult.
Amazingly enough, I made it without pretzels. I had my raisins and my sunflower seeds, and honestly, I just didn't snack much. I ate ACTUAL food at meals instead. Astonishing!
Now the two weeks has been over for a while and I may as well not have bothered. We still walk to the mail sometimes, but it's been cold and rainy so as regular exercise it's a bust. I've eaten tons of sugar. I've had some caffeine because of massive amounts of inn-working, which I shall describe later, and even a touch of alcohol. The instant the two weeks was over, I went out and bought a bag of pretzels, though admittedly I didn't buy one this week and I might just keep up that pattern.
And I've been deeeeepressed again. Hurray!
They say the body remembers things long after our minds have forgotten them, gotten over them, simply not thought about them for ages.
Both my aunt and my mother feel inexplicably depressed in the spring, despite the fact that they both love the spring, the holidays and flowers and foods. This is because their mother passed away then, nearly forty years ago, suddenly and without closure. It took my aunt going to a therapist to figure out that's what it was.
My cousin always feels horrible to the day of her traumatic break-up with her ex-boyfriend several years ago. She never quite remembers it, always just wonders why she feels so crappy, until she goes back and re-reads her blog from years past.
I hate that my own traumatic experience with my job and my boss was happening last year this time. I love the fall. I mean, I hate it because it means the winter is right around the corner and I detest being cold, but I love it because it's beautiful. It's got my favorite seasonal foods and bright colors and wonderful smells everywhere.
But now I keep remembering how awful I was feeling last year at this time. I keep trying to remember that I should be jumping for joy that I'm NOT THERE ANYMORE. My body refuses to listen. I think that's really the only reason I'm feeling this right now. There's no other real reason.
I feel like I'm getting more paranoid, shutting myself in a lot more. I feel like my brain is refusing to let words out, and my face is showing everyone how scared I am, how needy, how desperate. I feel like living every-day life, which involves talking to people and being around people and having to measure up to what my job requires of me and the like, is almost intolerable sometimes. I feel like I will never be good enough, never be able to open up, never be wanted or cared about, never be worth anything, never be anything other than a trembling fetal ball of repressed fear.
I wonder if, when January rolls around, this will change any.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Centrifugal Force
A couple of weeks ago I had a wake-up call regarding my depression. It made me realize that I wasn't taking care of myself enough, and that if I ever wanted to get to feeling better, I'd have to do something about that.
So what did I do?
I started YET ANOTHER PROJECT.
Relax, it's a small one. Another one of my "two weeks because that's all I can take" events.
I decided upon four goals:
1) I'd work out every day of those two weeks,
2) I'd avoid non-fruit sugar (meaning no white or brown sugar, no honey, no molasses, etc.),
3) I'd avoid caffeine and alcohol, and
4) I wouldn't buy any pretzels.
I'm about halfway through now, and my progress has been mixed.
Working out: The first week I worked out every day, Monday-Friday, and then on Saturday and Sunday I worked at the inn, which involves running around for 4.5 hours or so. I deemed that to be enough exercise because my feet were killing me and I was physically exhausted, but probably doesn't quite count. Then this past Monday I got my period, and I felt too horrible and dragged out to do anything. Yesterday "working out" was defined as "walking the 1.2 miles to the mailbox and back at a slow and easy pace," which...again, probably doesn't quite count.
So really I've been slacking a smidge. Gotta pick up the pace today.
Eating sugar: I've done fairly well with this one, having virtuously avoided the candy at work, buying any sweets, or even baking with any. Lately, though...again, I've slacked a little. Well, not "slacked" so much as "run on autopilot like the sugar junkie I am."
And I'm being serious on that last-- I'm totally a sugar junkie. I have to have something sweet every day, preferably multiple times. I find giving up sugar to be harder even than giving up cigarettes, which, y'know, is notoriously difficult.
Last Monday at work, I thought to myself, "Man, I just ate curry and my breath reeks. I'd better have a peppermint to freshen it." So I did, completely without the GOOD kind of thinking. The instant the last morsel had melted away, I went, "AW HELL."
Then I baked some carrots for a meal once, and my standard carrot recipe involves some spices and a small dash of honey or agave syrup.
...You see where this is going.
Then yesterday...oh lord. I tried to make a quick-bread recipe using no sugar and applesauce instead of the oil. But you know what? 1/4 cup of applesauce is not going to give quick bread much taste. So...I admit it. I cheated. Consciously, this time. I used maybe two table-spoons' worth of agave syrup. I may as well not have, though, because quite frankly the bread is still not sweet.
And...I had ketchup on the hamburgers we ate yesterday.
...Ah well.
Caffeine and alcohol: I am proud to announce that I've completely avoided these. I didn't have coffee or decaf at the inn. I haven't even had caffeinated tea! As for alcohol, my giving that up is more akin to a non-smoker giving up cigarettes for Lent. I drink so rarely I may as well not have bothered. But...in for a penny, in for a pound, right?
And the real klinker...
PRETZELS.
Ahhhh, my sweet salty love. How I dream of your crispy nothings in my mouth.
I am proud to say that I have not bought any pretzels. I can't say I haven't *eaten* any, since I had half a bag when I started my project, but once those were gone (in, oh, about two days) I never looked back.
I've been munching on raisins (good for the sweet cravings, too), sunflower seeds, and whatever random baked good I've made. It's good too, because I tend to munch on pretzels a lot, when I'm doing everything from reading to playing games to...eating meals...and the empty carbs were probably not so great.
My ultimate goals with this project?
I want to learn how to cook and bake with less sugar, and eat less in general, since just because it is available does not mean I should ingest it.
I want to not binge on anything, sweet or salty, liquid or solid, which is admittedly a problem of mine, especially when I'm feeling sad.
I'd love to break the haze of anhedonia, so I actually feel like I'm living my life instead of simply killing time.
I'd like to not rely solely on packaged foods to fulfill my snacky cravings.
I'd like to cut back my pretzel-eating to once every two weeks.
I'd like to limit coffee to once a week.
I'd like to cut back on non-fruit sugary things to twice a week.
I'd really like to get back into the habit of exercising 3-4 times a week.
Aaaaaand centrifugal force, GO.
So what did I do?
I started YET ANOTHER PROJECT.
Relax, it's a small one. Another one of my "two weeks because that's all I can take" events.
I decided upon four goals:
1) I'd work out every day of those two weeks,
2) I'd avoid non-fruit sugar (meaning no white or brown sugar, no honey, no molasses, etc.),
3) I'd avoid caffeine and alcohol, and
4) I wouldn't buy any pretzels.
I'm about halfway through now, and my progress has been mixed.
Working out: The first week I worked out every day, Monday-Friday, and then on Saturday and Sunday I worked at the inn, which involves running around for 4.5 hours or so. I deemed that to be enough exercise because my feet were killing me and I was physically exhausted, but probably doesn't quite count. Then this past Monday I got my period, and I felt too horrible and dragged out to do anything. Yesterday "working out" was defined as "walking the 1.2 miles to the mailbox and back at a slow and easy pace," which...again, probably doesn't quite count.
So really I've been slacking a smidge. Gotta pick up the pace today.
Eating sugar: I've done fairly well with this one, having virtuously avoided the candy at work, buying any sweets, or even baking with any. Lately, though...again, I've slacked a little. Well, not "slacked" so much as "run on autopilot like the sugar junkie I am."
And I'm being serious on that last-- I'm totally a sugar junkie. I have to have something sweet every day, preferably multiple times. I find giving up sugar to be harder even than giving up cigarettes, which, y'know, is notoriously difficult.
Last Monday at work, I thought to myself, "Man, I just ate curry and my breath reeks. I'd better have a peppermint to freshen it." So I did, completely without the GOOD kind of thinking. The instant the last morsel had melted away, I went, "AW HELL."
Then I baked some carrots for a meal once, and my standard carrot recipe involves some spices and a small dash of honey or agave syrup.
...You see where this is going.
Then yesterday...oh lord. I tried to make a quick-bread recipe using no sugar and applesauce instead of the oil. But you know what? 1/4 cup of applesauce is not going to give quick bread much taste. So...I admit it. I cheated. Consciously, this time. I used maybe two table-spoons' worth of agave syrup. I may as well not have, though, because quite frankly the bread is still not sweet.
And...I had ketchup on the hamburgers we ate yesterday.
...Ah well.
Caffeine and alcohol: I am proud to announce that I've completely avoided these. I didn't have coffee or decaf at the inn. I haven't even had caffeinated tea! As for alcohol, my giving that up is more akin to a non-smoker giving up cigarettes for Lent. I drink so rarely I may as well not have bothered. But...in for a penny, in for a pound, right?
And the real klinker...
PRETZELS.
Ahhhh, my sweet salty love. How I dream of your crispy nothings in my mouth.
I am proud to say that I have not bought any pretzels. I can't say I haven't *eaten* any, since I had half a bag when I started my project, but once those were gone (in, oh, about two days) I never looked back.
I've been munching on raisins (good for the sweet cravings, too), sunflower seeds, and whatever random baked good I've made. It's good too, because I tend to munch on pretzels a lot, when I'm doing everything from reading to playing games to...eating meals...and the empty carbs were probably not so great.
My ultimate goals with this project?
I want to learn how to cook and bake with less sugar, and eat less in general, since just because it is available does not mean I should ingest it.
I want to not binge on anything, sweet or salty, liquid or solid, which is admittedly a problem of mine, especially when I'm feeling sad.
I'd love to break the haze of anhedonia, so I actually feel like I'm living my life instead of simply killing time.
I'd like to not rely solely on packaged foods to fulfill my snacky cravings.
I'd like to cut back my pretzel-eating to once every two weeks.
I'd like to limit coffee to once a week.
I'd like to cut back on non-fruit sugary things to twice a week.
I'd really like to get back into the habit of exercising 3-4 times a week.
Aaaaaand centrifugal force, GO.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
This is ridiculous.
Let me tell you about my depression.
I'm dysthymic, which means I have chronic low-level depression, which occasionally descends into periods of major depression. A major contributing factor to this is the fact that I also have rather severe social anxiety disorder.
It's a ten-year-old topic with a life-long basis and I think I've begun blog entries on it so many times it all starts to sound both melodramatic, whiny, and like I've simply given up trying to do anything about it.
Why do I feel this way this, and Why can't I do this that, and the like. I'm starting to sound like a broken record, or at least an emo-kid.
In college, when it was first diagnosed, I went to counseling, and tried anti-depressants, specifically Paxil. While the drugs did work to some extent-- I lost my social phobia or at least my inhibitions enough to make some friends-- they messed me up in other ways. I...lost my inhibitions. It was a bad scene. I also lost a lot of the creativity that had been such a major part of my life until then. I don't think I drew or wrote anything for years. Plus, I lost my appetite (in defiance of the normal "weight gain" people experience on SSRIs), my head felt like it was stuffed with cotton, I was twitching at night in my sleep, aaaaand my libido was pretty much completely destroyed. Because you needed to know that.
So I eventually stopped the Paxil. I figured I was cured enough that I could manage, now that I knew the symptoms and what worked for me to nip them in the bud. That did work for a while, actually. Exercise always has helped me, and for a while after college I was working out every day. I was beginning my aforementioned run of starting projects (and not finishing most of them), which was fun, and I wrote my first novels during National Novel Writing Month. I felt down plenty, but it was different, less intense. I found ways to distract myself and not think about it so bloody much.
Still...it crept back in. It was like a house you think is sealed up nice and tight, but somehow the rain creeps into the cracks, and mold starts to grow, and sooner or later it pops up on your ceiling where you can see it (speaking of which, our ceiling is showing water damage, arrrgh!). Unfortunately by then, it's too late to do any "nipping in the bud."
When I started grad school, it had gotten bad enough that I knew it was going to become a problem again. My social anxiety was back in full force, due to the new surroundings, new community, the career pressure...Not too pleasant.
Probably contributing to this was the fact that the hormonal birth control I was taking was affecting my mood. I got PMS, like most women do, of course, but mine was...rough. I would cry at the drop of a hat, I would get angry at the smallest provocation, I would have these horrible dark, desperate thoughts in my head that frightened me.
I did go to a counselor about this. She recommended that I get a full physical work-up, to check my hormone levels and explore alternative means of birth control. That, by the way, was the end of hormonal BC for me-- the Pill made me nauseous, I was not into...inserting...anything like the NuvaRing, the patch was what was causing the whole mess, and I had no desire to risk getting the shot and feeling that way for months.
She also suggested I go back on antidepressants, and I seriously considered it for a while, since there were other kinds than the one I'd taken before that had messed me up so badly. I eventually decided not to, because I didn't want to be dependent on a pill for happiness.
I DID, however, find out that I had borderline hypothyroidism, which can contribute to depression, but not enough to take medicine for. I was told to just keep an eye on my levels.
After grad school we moved back to our current location, and it all sunk gradually downward. The stress of finding a job, adjusting to life outside of a city, adjusting to the jobs I did find, realizing I had little in common with the people I came into contact with but too scared to try looking elsewhere...I had a brief slide into major depression, I think. I managed to pull myself out of it I don't even know how.
Then I had a wedding to plan. Then I got married. Then I was laid off from my job. Then we had to move to a place I HATE (called "Salisbury, North Carolina") for a job that ended up being one of the most traumatic events of my life.
That was another period of major depression. I went as far as getting my thyroid levels checked because I was afraid the sheer, unbridled misery I felt couldn't possibly be so severe without hormonal dissonance. Turns out they were normal, and again I had to seriously consider going back on anti-depressants.
The only thing that pulled me out of THAT depression was leaving the job, moving back to our home, and starting a better job at the very place I'd gotten laid off from. Imagine moving from a cold, dark, ugly town where you know no one, your boss is psychologically torturing you, you hate your job, and you have to drive to Charlotte to go anywhere you might actually want to go...to your beautiful family land in the mountains, surrounded by a loving family and community, to a job where they are laid-back and nice to you, where you don't have to wear a suit, where you can work part-time and still make enough to live on, where you can relax...
I think I was nearly euphoric for a month or two. I staved off any depression simply by telling myself, "IT COULD BE SO MUCH WORSE, HOLY CRAP."
But, again, like that insidious mold, it crept back in.
That job really did a number on me. I let it, of course, but when all's said and done it's still true. I never feel good enough, I never feel like I'm completely capable and confident. I am afraid to go downstairs sometimes, for fear my boss will see me and want to talk to me, which is ridiculous because she's a very nice woman who understands that mistakes are made, and knows the ambiguous nature of research might involve a few crossed wires here and there. It's definitely changed my ambition for the worse; I don't even want to be a professional librarian anymore because I'm so afraid I wouldn't be able to take the pressure or deliver when I need to.
And personality-wise? Creative-wise? I feel...flat. I feel like I don't really want to do anything anymore. I feel like whatever I do, it's all just killing time until I can die. I feel like I can't talk to anyone. I marvel at the many people I see who pop out jokes at the spur of the moment, who effortlessly deliver monologues seemingly without any thought beforehand. I feel like my interests are mostly antiquated (who embroiders except for old ladies?) or too trendy to be of any use. I feel like though I may have some measure of skill in many areas, I never seem to be better at any of them than anybody else. My mind goes blank in front of people. I can't even be arsed to do the things I know, I KNOW help me, like exercise. I don't even embroider because I'm afraid my skill is so far outweighed by my vision that I'll just fuck it all up (like everything else) and end up with a mess.
And to top it all off, I DON'T want to go back on anti-depressants and I DON'T want to go to counseling because I'm both too cheap and too poor to do so, even with a sliding-scale mental health center, even if my aunt who's a psychiatrist gives me free sample packs of the pills like she did when I was on Paxil.
I've felt this way for a good ten years now. It's getting ridiculous. I can't even wail "I don't know what to do!" anymore because, well, I know damn well what to do.
I just won't DO it. So what do I expect?
I'm dysthymic, which means I have chronic low-level depression, which occasionally descends into periods of major depression. A major contributing factor to this is the fact that I also have rather severe social anxiety disorder.
It's a ten-year-old topic with a life-long basis and I think I've begun blog entries on it so many times it all starts to sound both melodramatic, whiny, and like I've simply given up trying to do anything about it.
Why do I feel this way this, and Why can't I do this that, and the like. I'm starting to sound like a broken record, or at least an emo-kid.
In college, when it was first diagnosed, I went to counseling, and tried anti-depressants, specifically Paxil. While the drugs did work to some extent-- I lost my social phobia or at least my inhibitions enough to make some friends-- they messed me up in other ways. I...lost my inhibitions. It was a bad scene. I also lost a lot of the creativity that had been such a major part of my life until then. I don't think I drew or wrote anything for years. Plus, I lost my appetite (in defiance of the normal "weight gain" people experience on SSRIs), my head felt like it was stuffed with cotton, I was twitching at night in my sleep, aaaaand my libido was pretty much completely destroyed. Because you needed to know that.
So I eventually stopped the Paxil. I figured I was cured enough that I could manage, now that I knew the symptoms and what worked for me to nip them in the bud. That did work for a while, actually. Exercise always has helped me, and for a while after college I was working out every day. I was beginning my aforementioned run of starting projects (and not finishing most of them), which was fun, and I wrote my first novels during National Novel Writing Month. I felt down plenty, but it was different, less intense. I found ways to distract myself and not think about it so bloody much.
Still...it crept back in. It was like a house you think is sealed up nice and tight, but somehow the rain creeps into the cracks, and mold starts to grow, and sooner or later it pops up on your ceiling where you can see it (speaking of which, our ceiling is showing water damage, arrrgh!). Unfortunately by then, it's too late to do any "nipping in the bud."
When I started grad school, it had gotten bad enough that I knew it was going to become a problem again. My social anxiety was back in full force, due to the new surroundings, new community, the career pressure...Not too pleasant.
Probably contributing to this was the fact that the hormonal birth control I was taking was affecting my mood. I got PMS, like most women do, of course, but mine was...rough. I would cry at the drop of a hat, I would get angry at the smallest provocation, I would have these horrible dark, desperate thoughts in my head that frightened me.
I did go to a counselor about this. She recommended that I get a full physical work-up, to check my hormone levels and explore alternative means of birth control. That, by the way, was the end of hormonal BC for me-- the Pill made me nauseous, I was not into...inserting...anything like the NuvaRing, the patch was what was causing the whole mess, and I had no desire to risk getting the shot and feeling that way for months.
She also suggested I go back on antidepressants, and I seriously considered it for a while, since there were other kinds than the one I'd taken before that had messed me up so badly. I eventually decided not to, because I didn't want to be dependent on a pill for happiness.
I DID, however, find out that I had borderline hypothyroidism, which can contribute to depression, but not enough to take medicine for. I was told to just keep an eye on my levels.
After grad school we moved back to our current location, and it all sunk gradually downward. The stress of finding a job, adjusting to life outside of a city, adjusting to the jobs I did find, realizing I had little in common with the people I came into contact with but too scared to try looking elsewhere...I had a brief slide into major depression, I think. I managed to pull myself out of it I don't even know how.
Then I had a wedding to plan. Then I got married. Then I was laid off from my job. Then we had to move to a place I HATE (called "Salisbury, North Carolina") for a job that ended up being one of the most traumatic events of my life.
That was another period of major depression. I went as far as getting my thyroid levels checked because I was afraid the sheer, unbridled misery I felt couldn't possibly be so severe without hormonal dissonance. Turns out they were normal, and again I had to seriously consider going back on anti-depressants.
The only thing that pulled me out of THAT depression was leaving the job, moving back to our home, and starting a better job at the very place I'd gotten laid off from. Imagine moving from a cold, dark, ugly town where you know no one, your boss is psychologically torturing you, you hate your job, and you have to drive to Charlotte to go anywhere you might actually want to go...to your beautiful family land in the mountains, surrounded by a loving family and community, to a job where they are laid-back and nice to you, where you don't have to wear a suit, where you can work part-time and still make enough to live on, where you can relax...
I think I was nearly euphoric for a month or two. I staved off any depression simply by telling myself, "IT COULD BE SO MUCH WORSE, HOLY CRAP."
But, again, like that insidious mold, it crept back in.
That job really did a number on me. I let it, of course, but when all's said and done it's still true. I never feel good enough, I never feel like I'm completely capable and confident. I am afraid to go downstairs sometimes, for fear my boss will see me and want to talk to me, which is ridiculous because she's a very nice woman who understands that mistakes are made, and knows the ambiguous nature of research might involve a few crossed wires here and there. It's definitely changed my ambition for the worse; I don't even want to be a professional librarian anymore because I'm so afraid I wouldn't be able to take the pressure or deliver when I need to.
And personality-wise? Creative-wise? I feel...flat. I feel like I don't really want to do anything anymore. I feel like whatever I do, it's all just killing time until I can die. I feel like I can't talk to anyone. I marvel at the many people I see who pop out jokes at the spur of the moment, who effortlessly deliver monologues seemingly without any thought beforehand. I feel like my interests are mostly antiquated (who embroiders except for old ladies?) or too trendy to be of any use. I feel like though I may have some measure of skill in many areas, I never seem to be better at any of them than anybody else. My mind goes blank in front of people. I can't even be arsed to do the things I know, I KNOW help me, like exercise. I don't even embroider because I'm afraid my skill is so far outweighed by my vision that I'll just fuck it all up (like everything else) and end up with a mess.
And to top it all off, I DON'T want to go back on anti-depressants and I DON'T want to go to counseling because I'm both too cheap and too poor to do so, even with a sliding-scale mental health center, even if my aunt who's a psychiatrist gives me free sample packs of the pills like she did when I was on Paxil.
I've felt this way for a good ten years now. It's getting ridiculous. I can't even wail "I don't know what to do!" anymore because, well, I know damn well what to do.
I just won't DO it. So what do I expect?
Thursday, September 24, 2009
The Case of Neko
Wednesday night, around 8pm on September 9th, hubs and I were sitting in the living room as usual. Hubs was playing a video game on X-Box 360 Live with his friend, I was reading.
All of a sudden we heard a clawing at the front door.
"Shit!" I jumped up. "Neko's still outside!"
Neko is our cat. She is an indoor/outdoor cat. We let her outside in the morning, she comes in and out periodically for food and a nap, and we always bring her in before dark. However, this time, it was pitch-black outside, and we'd forgotten to let her in.
I flung open the front door (odd in itself, since she almost always uses the back door), and she jumped off the porch railing (also odd) and ran inside, soaked, filthy, and with her tail puffed-up (VERY odd).
She was acting a little strange too, so I ran to get a towel and tried to simultaneous clean her off, dry her, and calm her down. She seemed terrified, jumping at shadows, not wanting me to touch her. Finally she let me mop off the worst of the mud, and I pet her for a while, worried.
The night progressed, and I kept an eye on her. I figured she'd had a run-in with one of the outdoor house-cats we have in the neighborhood and maybe got a little more roughed-up than usual. She was still acting strange, though, somewhat listless, not nearly as talkative, not very hungry (she ate a treat I gave her but wouldn't touch her food). I noticed a small oozy spot on top of her head but she wouldn't let me examine it, and the house was too dim for me to see much else.
I woke up at around 6 with the nagging feeling that something was wrong. Where was Neko? After some frantic searching, I found her under the bed, where she never goes unless she is feeling bad. She was definitely sick. I decided then and there to take her to the vet. I couldn't help but think about the copperhead I'd come across the other day (although after looking it up, we don't think it was a copperhead after all). I was terrified she'd somehow gotten bitten and was going to die.
We don't have any emergency vets within about 45 minutes of our house. The nearest vet didn't open until about 8 am, and believe me, I was incredibly thankful it was a weekday and one I didn't have to work, so I spent the next couple of hours dancing around anxiously. Finally I was able to get an appointment for that morning, and I grabbed the cat carrier, dug Neko out from under the bed (it took a broom and the moving of quite a few boxes), and whisked her off to this place I'd never been before.
I got a little lost trying to find the place, but once inside I felt much relieved. Neko was mewing as she always does when forced into her carrier, and generally acting like she wasn't on the brink of death, which I took as a good sign. I figured if she'd gotten bitten by a copperhead, she'd be dead already, or at least pretty effed-up.
Once in the check-up room, the vet tech took her out of the carrier and to my horror I saw just how swollen the side of her face was. I hadn't even noticed it, since it had been so dark that morning. The top of her head, near that oozy spot I'd noticed, was swollen too. Obviously something had bitten her, but I had no clue what. The vet tech said she had a slight fever, which I'd suspected, and told me I did right to bring her in.
The veterinarian who looked Neko over was Australian, which made him fun to listen to, even as distraught as I was. He reassured me that she would be fine, that if she'd been bitten by a poisonous snake she'd be in much worse shape than she was, which was a real relief. He, of course, noticed two bite wounds in the swollen areas on her face, and recommended that we shave those parts to be able to disinfect them.
Poor Neko has two bald spots now. They look ugly, but no uglier than those bite wounds looked.
She got an antibiotics shot that would slowly release the drugs to her over a period of time and would work much better than trying to give her oral medication (it doesn't work well with Neko. Trust me on this). She also got an injection of fluids that would sit under her skin and slowly absorb into her body, in case she got so sick she wouldn't drink. I wasn't too sure about that one, since she'd never actually stopped drinking, and the fluids made her look like she had a great big sloshy tumor on one shoulder, but I figured it couldn't hurt. I also received a can of special wet food that I could mix with water in case I needed to force-feed her with a syringe.
On the way home I had to get gas, but before I reached the gas station, Neko discovered that forced fluids don't help one's bladder control, and wet her carrier. I stopped at the gas station, rushed into the bathroom to look for paper towels, found that all they had was an air-dryer, and eventually had to buy a roll of Scott to mop out poor Neko's carrier and attempt to prevent an overflow into my passenger car seat.
We were supposed to go on our trip to Mammoth Caves the next day, and I was already contemplating the possibility that I wouldn't be able to go. I'd like to say, here and now, that it wasn't even a question. If Neko had needed me to feed her and care for her, I'd have stayed.
I figured I'd keep her in our master bathroom, since it was big and easily cleanable in case she had an accident. I moved her litterbox in there, her food and water, and a pile of towels for her to curl up in. I figured she'd be feeling pretty rotten still. However, the instant I let her out, she went right over to her food bowl.
I knew then she'd be okay.
Over the rest of the day, she ended up eating most of the can of wet food I'd been given, clawing at the bathroom door to try to get out, and slowly absorbing that enormous bubble of fluid that had slid over to her elbow and just looked awful.
Slowly but surely back to her old self.
By the next morning, she had absorbed everything and was acting normally, waking me up early wanting food, meowing like crazy, even wanting to play. I felt comfortable enough to leave her to go on our trip, though I made sure to have Hubs' mom check on her at least once.
We still don't know what attacked her, but living in a rural area as we do, it could have been almost anything.
I don't quite know how this will affect her going out. I know I will be a lot more paranoid than I was before, and that she definitely will not be going out after dark or anywhere near dark anymore. But going outside makes Neko so happy. She uses up all her energy roaming around, so when she does come inside she's relaxed, more affectionate, content to lay there instead of running around bored and being destructive to get attention.
I'm thinking at least we won't let her outside for long periods of time without checking on her a lot, and preferably I'll just go outside with her more often than not.
All I know is that this was a wake-up call. A lesson not to take my beautiful, talkative, loving baby kitty for granted.
I imagine all parents feel this way the first time their child, whether it's a fur-child or a human child, gets injured or sick in some way. It's terrifying, but at the same time you realize how good you have it, how wonderful the love is that you feel for this being.
I'm so glad she was spared worse injury. I'm so glad she's still around to brighten my day, bald spots and all.
All of a sudden we heard a clawing at the front door.
"Shit!" I jumped up. "Neko's still outside!"
Neko is our cat. She is an indoor/outdoor cat. We let her outside in the morning, she comes in and out periodically for food and a nap, and we always bring her in before dark. However, this time, it was pitch-black outside, and we'd forgotten to let her in.
I flung open the front door (odd in itself, since she almost always uses the back door), and she jumped off the porch railing (also odd) and ran inside, soaked, filthy, and with her tail puffed-up (VERY odd).
She was acting a little strange too, so I ran to get a towel and tried to simultaneous clean her off, dry her, and calm her down. She seemed terrified, jumping at shadows, not wanting me to touch her. Finally she let me mop off the worst of the mud, and I pet her for a while, worried.
The night progressed, and I kept an eye on her. I figured she'd had a run-in with one of the outdoor house-cats we have in the neighborhood and maybe got a little more roughed-up than usual. She was still acting strange, though, somewhat listless, not nearly as talkative, not very hungry (she ate a treat I gave her but wouldn't touch her food). I noticed a small oozy spot on top of her head but she wouldn't let me examine it, and the house was too dim for me to see much else.
I woke up at around 6 with the nagging feeling that something was wrong. Where was Neko? After some frantic searching, I found her under the bed, where she never goes unless she is feeling bad. She was definitely sick. I decided then and there to take her to the vet. I couldn't help but think about the copperhead I'd come across the other day (although after looking it up, we don't think it was a copperhead after all). I was terrified she'd somehow gotten bitten and was going to die.
We don't have any emergency vets within about 45 minutes of our house. The nearest vet didn't open until about 8 am, and believe me, I was incredibly thankful it was a weekday and one I didn't have to work, so I spent the next couple of hours dancing around anxiously. Finally I was able to get an appointment for that morning, and I grabbed the cat carrier, dug Neko out from under the bed (it took a broom and the moving of quite a few boxes), and whisked her off to this place I'd never been before.
I got a little lost trying to find the place, but once inside I felt much relieved. Neko was mewing as she always does when forced into her carrier, and generally acting like she wasn't on the brink of death, which I took as a good sign. I figured if she'd gotten bitten by a copperhead, she'd be dead already, or at least pretty effed-up.
Once in the check-up room, the vet tech took her out of the carrier and to my horror I saw just how swollen the side of her face was. I hadn't even noticed it, since it had been so dark that morning. The top of her head, near that oozy spot I'd noticed, was swollen too. Obviously something had bitten her, but I had no clue what. The vet tech said she had a slight fever, which I'd suspected, and told me I did right to bring her in.
The veterinarian who looked Neko over was Australian, which made him fun to listen to, even as distraught as I was. He reassured me that she would be fine, that if she'd been bitten by a poisonous snake she'd be in much worse shape than she was, which was a real relief. He, of course, noticed two bite wounds in the swollen areas on her face, and recommended that we shave those parts to be able to disinfect them.
Poor Neko has two bald spots now. They look ugly, but no uglier than those bite wounds looked.
She got an antibiotics shot that would slowly release the drugs to her over a period of time and would work much better than trying to give her oral medication (it doesn't work well with Neko. Trust me on this). She also got an injection of fluids that would sit under her skin and slowly absorb into her body, in case she got so sick she wouldn't drink. I wasn't too sure about that one, since she'd never actually stopped drinking, and the fluids made her look like she had a great big sloshy tumor on one shoulder, but I figured it couldn't hurt. I also received a can of special wet food that I could mix with water in case I needed to force-feed her with a syringe.
On the way home I had to get gas, but before I reached the gas station, Neko discovered that forced fluids don't help one's bladder control, and wet her carrier. I stopped at the gas station, rushed into the bathroom to look for paper towels, found that all they had was an air-dryer, and eventually had to buy a roll of Scott to mop out poor Neko's carrier and attempt to prevent an overflow into my passenger car seat.
We were supposed to go on our trip to Mammoth Caves the next day, and I was already contemplating the possibility that I wouldn't be able to go. I'd like to say, here and now, that it wasn't even a question. If Neko had needed me to feed her and care for her, I'd have stayed.
I figured I'd keep her in our master bathroom, since it was big and easily cleanable in case she had an accident. I moved her litterbox in there, her food and water, and a pile of towels for her to curl up in. I figured she'd be feeling pretty rotten still. However, the instant I let her out, she went right over to her food bowl.
I knew then she'd be okay.
Over the rest of the day, she ended up eating most of the can of wet food I'd been given, clawing at the bathroom door to try to get out, and slowly absorbing that enormous bubble of fluid that had slid over to her elbow and just looked awful.
Slowly but surely back to her old self.
By the next morning, she had absorbed everything and was acting normally, waking me up early wanting food, meowing like crazy, even wanting to play. I felt comfortable enough to leave her to go on our trip, though I made sure to have Hubs' mom check on her at least once.
We still don't know what attacked her, but living in a rural area as we do, it could have been almost anything.
I don't quite know how this will affect her going out. I know I will be a lot more paranoid than I was before, and that she definitely will not be going out after dark or anywhere near dark anymore. But going outside makes Neko so happy. She uses up all her energy roaming around, so when she does come inside she's relaxed, more affectionate, content to lay there instead of running around bored and being destructive to get attention.
I'm thinking at least we won't let her outside for long periods of time without checking on her a lot, and preferably I'll just go outside with her more often than not.
All I know is that this was a wake-up call. A lesson not to take my beautiful, talkative, loving baby kitty for granted.
I imagine all parents feel this way the first time their child, whether it's a fur-child or a human child, gets injured or sick in some way. It's terrifying, but at the same time you realize how good you have it, how wonderful the love is that you feel for this being.
I'm so glad she was spared worse injury. I'm so glad she's still around to brighten my day, bald spots and all.
A Mammoth Experience
Any trip I go on, I resolve to be one of those people who is always taking pictures, to "capture the memories" as it were. Growing up, my family had bazillions of photo albums to look through, and one of my favorite pastimes was to go through those albums and remember people, places, and events that have disappeared into time. And also snicker at the hairstyles and clothes we found attractive back in the day. A perm with short bangs? A tight white halter dress with one big sunflower silk-screened on the front of it? Seriously?
Anyway, fast-forward to the actual trips I go on (which are very few). We dutifully take our camera and...either forget to take any pictures, or the batteries we've assured ourselves would be alright die right when we need them. So no pictures. It's called Cheap Camera Syndrome. Mammoth Caves, of course, came down with a heavy case of this devastating illness. So all the pictures I'm showing were taken by one of our fellow travelers, whose name is Chad T., just so you know. All, you know, zero of you. I like to give credit where it is due.
Enough babbling. Talking about the trip!
The drive up was surprisingly not bad, considering it was 6.5 hours long and began at 6 am. Stocked up on McDonald's coffee, I was behind the wheel most of the trip up, since Hubs got maybe 3 hours of sleep and was probably hallucinating or at least delirious from exhaustion. The goal was for him to take a nap on the way up, but of course that never happened.
There's something about driving through mountains that not only looks gorgeous but keeps you on your toes. Plus, there were tunnels, which I *love.* On the way, we passed such notable places as an absolutely enormous adult (*ahem*, porn) store with an equally enormous cross erected (*snicker*) over it, the Hillbilly Mug Bog (god knows), Anton's Sugar Shack, and a monster-truck by the name of the Hustlin' Hobo. Good times, good times. We got off-track a couple of times due to a rogue GPS unit, sidetracked by a sudden run for a geocache, and stopped for a few unnecessary (in my opinion) potty breaks, but all things considered we made it to the campsite in good time.
Mammoth Caves is a national park and has a campground attached to it, right near the visitor's center, a small store we had fun looking through, a hotel(!), and various walking trails. The campground itself is in the midst of a beautiful forest-y area. After we set up our tents, we walked around it for a while, looking for dead-wood to fuel our campfire with but mostly just taking in the gorgeous scenery.
There were flocks of wild turkey and deer that came within a few yards of us, almost completely unafraid. They must see thousands of people every year, and since there's no hunting allowed (and undoubtedly some clandestine feeding), they grow up with little fear of humans.
That night we built a fire, cooked our food, and shot the shit. Hubs and I had brought mostly cooked food for the weekend, since it takes forever to make stuff on a campfire, but our friends roasted weenies. I only toasted marshmallows, and boy howdy they were good.
The conversation was...a little adult for my taste. Not that I'm a prude by any means, but eventually it gets boring. It got boring for me. Plus, I'm...not a talker. I have made very few friends in my life as a result of this. It's not just fear, either, although that is a large part. I am simply not the kind of person who enjoys talking about trivial every-day things. In a nutshell, I hate small-talk. So I was at a little bit of a disadvantage with Hubs' friends. They all knew each other for years, had hung out numerous times, and were very comfortable in each others' presence. I felt...left-out. Not in my element. Which, of course, made me clam up more. That set the theme for the entire weekend for me. *sigh*
The other times Hubs and I had gone camping, we'd slept in our sleeping bag on the ground. I didn't mind it since our sleeping bag is thick, but Hubs hated it, so this time we took an air mattress. ...It pretty much blew a big fat one. Didn't inflate enough, and really killed my neck. So that night's sleep was...fitful, to say the least. That probably didn't help my mood any, nor did the fact that there were some annoyingly-loud late-night talkers at the campsite next to ours, and the campsite across the way housed a whole scout troop that woke up at the crack of dawn and started SCREAMING. Well, playing. But 10-year-old boys scream when they play.
We'd purchased tickets for the Grand Avenue cave tour, which lasted 4.5 hours and covered 4 miles of cave, and was supposed to be fairly strenuous with lots of stairs and changes in elevation. Really, the best bang for your buck. Our tour guide was a tall, skinny ranger with ears like a bat, which turned out to be very appropriate since we saw bats!
We were bussed to the cave entrance and given the safety talk (stop walking when you're taking pictures-- wouldn't want you to misstep and fall into one of the 200-ft-drop caverns; it's slick in there so don't fall and sue us, watch your head because caves tend to have rocks in them, etc.). Then we were led inside by our tour guide and a ranger-in-training.
So, the cave.
It was COLD. We'd been warned that it was between 55-60 degrees inside, and since I always get cold, I'd put on a thin long-sleeved shirt, a t-shirt over that, and a hooded sweatshirt over THAT. Waiting for the bus, I'd been sweating and our friend's wife tried to get me to take off the long-sleeved shirt at least, but I was glad I didn't. I was still cold even with it!
The trail was rough, though less rough than I'd feared. Most of the first half of the tour was pretty even, making me wonder if it wasn't a bit of a rip-off, despite the views. It was dim. There was just enough to see where to walk, and to catch the more spectacular formations. We stopped every now and then to hear a story about the history of the cave, the particulars (such as how deep below the Earth's surface we were, and just how they manage to have running toilets down there [they pump the, ahem, mess up in pipes]), and other interesting tidbits.
When I see something like this, I don't want to talk to anyone about it. I want to absorb it, feel it in my soul, listen quietly to what it's telling me. Things like this are almost spiritual for me. So maybe it wasn't the best thing to do with people I don't know very well. Small-talk around a campfire is one thing. Small-talk inside a glorious cave that I want to inwardly reflect on is quite another. I started feeling pretty annoyed and unhappy about halfway through, but luckily then we had a lunch break (there was actually a small cafeteria down there. Seriously.) and I was able to eat some pretzels and calm down a bit.
The trail got harder and harder after that. The trail got slick from the water seeping through the rock, there were quite a few steep hills to climb up, stairs and narrow passages to squeeze around. There were also quite a few low areas that most people have to duck, but being only 4'11", I was not most people. I did feel a little smug about that, I have to say.
I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. They were beautiful.
After a while, though, I got tired of being cold and trying to be sociable (when being sociable meant "dick jokes"), and I'm afraid I just started walking ahead of my group. I was in a grump most of the rest of the tour. I definitely enjoyed the caves, but I was ready to be out of there.
There were a LOT of people on the tour, including a lady who looked like she had to be at least 75. I have to say, I wasn't sure Grandma could keep up. But Grandma did better than I expected! Someone on our tour managed to get hurt somehow, either slipping and falling on the rock or having some other sort of difficulty, because the ranger-in-training had to stay with them at one of the cave's internal checkpoints and wait for some of the park EMTs to come in with a chair to get them out. For a little bit I feared for Grandma's safety, but she was actually one of the first people out of the cave, looking not in the least winded.
At the end, we emerged, exhausted, cold, and disheveled, into the sunshine. Then I had to try to cheer up again, but I don't think I succeeded too well. When we got back to the campsite I took a nap and a shower, and felt much better.
We had been thinking of going geocaching, but I think all of us were fried from that 4.5 miles hike. So instead, we just sat around the campfire again that night, watching silly Saturday Night Live videos and eating marshmallows. I went to bed early that night.
We'd also been discussing walking on one of the trails the next morning, but I think we were still fried (leftovers?) from the day before. It was the work of an hour or so to pack up our tent, put everything in our car, and eat a quick breakfast before heading out.
The drive home was much nicer. We weren't following our friends in their car anymore, so there were no unscheduled potty breaks or spur-of-the-moment geocaches, which means we made much better time.
We got home around 4 pm on Sunday, and I promptly got my period, which explained my mood of the entire weekend. And we promptly collapsed. After unpacking and all.
It was...an experience. I'm inclined to think it a good one, even if I was a pill for most of it. It's depressing and distressing both to think that I was the one who made it less fun than it could have been, because re-examining everything, when all's said and done, I didn't really have all that great a time.
I enjoyed the caves, but not the dark feelings I had inside them. I liked the people, but not being around them so constantly. I liked the trip, but something about it was flat. That something...was me.
I shouldn't be navel-gazing now. I should be remembering how in awe the caves made me, how wondrous it was to think about the gypsum formations that took millions of years to come together, how amazing the idea of water slowly seeping down to make the walls smooth over countless eras, how mysterious it was to think that though only 300 or so miles of cave have been explored, geologists think there's at least 500 or so more of unexplored.
Instead I'm thinking about my own feelings. What does that say about me?
Anyway, fast-forward to the actual trips I go on (which are very few). We dutifully take our camera and...either forget to take any pictures, or the batteries we've assured ourselves would be alright die right when we need them. So no pictures. It's called Cheap Camera Syndrome. Mammoth Caves, of course, came down with a heavy case of this devastating illness. So all the pictures I'm showing were taken by one of our fellow travelers, whose name is Chad T., just so you know. All, you know, zero of you. I like to give credit where it is due.
Enough babbling. Talking about the trip!
The drive up was surprisingly not bad, considering it was 6.5 hours long and began at 6 am. Stocked up on McDonald's coffee, I was behind the wheel most of the trip up, since Hubs got maybe 3 hours of sleep and was probably hallucinating or at least delirious from exhaustion. The goal was for him to take a nap on the way up, but of course that never happened.
There's something about driving through mountains that not only looks gorgeous but keeps you on your toes. Plus, there were tunnels, which I *love.* On the way, we passed such notable places as an absolutely enormous adult (*ahem*, porn) store with an equally enormous cross erected (*snicker*) over it, the Hillbilly Mug Bog (god knows), Anton's Sugar Shack, and a monster-truck by the name of the Hustlin' Hobo. Good times, good times. We got off-track a couple of times due to a rogue GPS unit, sidetracked by a sudden run for a geocache, and stopped for a few unnecessary (in my opinion) potty breaks, but all things considered we made it to the campsite in good time.
Mammoth Caves is a national park and has a campground attached to it, right near the visitor's center, a small store we had fun looking through, a hotel(!), and various walking trails. The campground itself is in the midst of a beautiful forest-y area. After we set up our tents, we walked around it for a while, looking for dead-wood to fuel our campfire with but mostly just taking in the gorgeous scenery.
There were flocks of wild turkey and deer that came within a few yards of us, almost completely unafraid. They must see thousands of people every year, and since there's no hunting allowed (and undoubtedly some clandestine feeding), they grow up with little fear of humans.
That night we built a fire, cooked our food, and shot the shit. Hubs and I had brought mostly cooked food for the weekend, since it takes forever to make stuff on a campfire, but our friends roasted weenies. I only toasted marshmallows, and boy howdy they were good.
The conversation was...a little adult for my taste. Not that I'm a prude by any means, but eventually it gets boring. It got boring for me. Plus, I'm...not a talker. I have made very few friends in my life as a result of this. It's not just fear, either, although that is a large part. I am simply not the kind of person who enjoys talking about trivial every-day things. In a nutshell, I hate small-talk. So I was at a little bit of a disadvantage with Hubs' friends. They all knew each other for years, had hung out numerous times, and were very comfortable in each others' presence. I felt...left-out. Not in my element. Which, of course, made me clam up more. That set the theme for the entire weekend for me. *sigh*
The other times Hubs and I had gone camping, we'd slept in our sleeping bag on the ground. I didn't mind it since our sleeping bag is thick, but Hubs hated it, so this time we took an air mattress. ...It pretty much blew a big fat one. Didn't inflate enough, and really killed my neck. So that night's sleep was...fitful, to say the least. That probably didn't help my mood any, nor did the fact that there were some annoyingly-loud late-night talkers at the campsite next to ours, and the campsite across the way housed a whole scout troop that woke up at the crack of dawn and started SCREAMING. Well, playing. But 10-year-old boys scream when they play.
We'd purchased tickets for the Grand Avenue cave tour, which lasted 4.5 hours and covered 4 miles of cave, and was supposed to be fairly strenuous with lots of stairs and changes in elevation. Really, the best bang for your buck. Our tour guide was a tall, skinny ranger with ears like a bat, which turned out to be very appropriate since we saw bats!
We were bussed to the cave entrance and given the safety talk (stop walking when you're taking pictures-- wouldn't want you to misstep and fall into one of the 200-ft-drop caverns; it's slick in there so don't fall and sue us, watch your head because caves tend to have rocks in them, etc.). Then we were led inside by our tour guide and a ranger-in-training.
So, the cave.
It was COLD. We'd been warned that it was between 55-60 degrees inside, and since I always get cold, I'd put on a thin long-sleeved shirt, a t-shirt over that, and a hooded sweatshirt over THAT. Waiting for the bus, I'd been sweating and our friend's wife tried to get me to take off the long-sleeved shirt at least, but I was glad I didn't. I was still cold even with it!
The trail was rough, though less rough than I'd feared. Most of the first half of the tour was pretty even, making me wonder if it wasn't a bit of a rip-off, despite the views. It was dim. There was just enough to see where to walk, and to catch the more spectacular formations. We stopped every now and then to hear a story about the history of the cave, the particulars (such as how deep below the Earth's surface we were, and just how they manage to have running toilets down there [they pump the, ahem, mess up in pipes]), and other interesting tidbits.
When I see something like this, I don't want to talk to anyone about it. I want to absorb it, feel it in my soul, listen quietly to what it's telling me. Things like this are almost spiritual for me. So maybe it wasn't the best thing to do with people I don't know very well. Small-talk around a campfire is one thing. Small-talk inside a glorious cave that I want to inwardly reflect on is quite another. I started feeling pretty annoyed and unhappy about halfway through, but luckily then we had a lunch break (there was actually a small cafeteria down there. Seriously.) and I was able to eat some pretzels and calm down a bit.
The trail got harder and harder after that. The trail got slick from the water seeping through the rock, there were quite a few steep hills to climb up, stairs and narrow passages to squeeze around. There were also quite a few low areas that most people have to duck, but being only 4'11", I was not most people. I did feel a little smug about that, I have to say.
I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. They were beautiful.
After a while, though, I got tired of being cold and trying to be sociable (when being sociable meant "dick jokes"), and I'm afraid I just started walking ahead of my group. I was in a grump most of the rest of the tour. I definitely enjoyed the caves, but I was ready to be out of there.
There were a LOT of people on the tour, including a lady who looked like she had to be at least 75. I have to say, I wasn't sure Grandma could keep up. But Grandma did better than I expected! Someone on our tour managed to get hurt somehow, either slipping and falling on the rock or having some other sort of difficulty, because the ranger-in-training had to stay with them at one of the cave's internal checkpoints and wait for some of the park EMTs to come in with a chair to get them out. For a little bit I feared for Grandma's safety, but she was actually one of the first people out of the cave, looking not in the least winded.
At the end, we emerged, exhausted, cold, and disheveled, into the sunshine. Then I had to try to cheer up again, but I don't think I succeeded too well. When we got back to the campsite I took a nap and a shower, and felt much better.
We had been thinking of going geocaching, but I think all of us were fried from that 4.5 miles hike. So instead, we just sat around the campfire again that night, watching silly Saturday Night Live videos and eating marshmallows. I went to bed early that night.
We'd also been discussing walking on one of the trails the next morning, but I think we were still fried (leftovers?) from the day before. It was the work of an hour or so to pack up our tent, put everything in our car, and eat a quick breakfast before heading out.
The drive home was much nicer. We weren't following our friends in their car anymore, so there were no unscheduled potty breaks or spur-of-the-moment geocaches, which means we made much better time.
We got home around 4 pm on Sunday, and I promptly got my period, which explained my mood of the entire weekend. And we promptly collapsed. After unpacking and all.
It was...an experience. I'm inclined to think it a good one, even if I was a pill for most of it. It's depressing and distressing both to think that I was the one who made it less fun than it could have been, because re-examining everything, when all's said and done, I didn't really have all that great a time.
I enjoyed the caves, but not the dark feelings I had inside them. I liked the people, but not being around them so constantly. I liked the trip, but something about it was flat. That something...was me.
I shouldn't be navel-gazing now. I should be remembering how in awe the caves made me, how wondrous it was to think about the gypsum formations that took millions of years to come together, how amazing the idea of water slowly seeping down to make the walls smooth over countless eras, how mysterious it was to think that though only 300 or so miles of cave have been explored, geologists think there's at least 500 or so more of unexplored.
Instead I'm thinking about my own feelings. What does that say about me?
Friday, September 18, 2009
Covetous
There are times when I find children to be shrill, annoying, needy, nerve-shattering, deafening, ungrateful, rude, inconsiderate, and out-of-control. And there are times when all I think about is what it would feel like to be pregnant, to feel the life inside my body, to give birth to a new squirming, mewling, helpless and yet utterly beautiful new creature, to raise and love and teach a little boy or girl that I helped to create, to develop a lasting and loving relationship with a person I can be proud of.
I waver between the idealized version of motherhood and the absolute hatred of the very idea of having to permanently deal with one of these brats. Neither is really all that healthy.
I suspect I have the potential to be an excellent mother. I also suspect that that potential would be largely unfulfilled, as lazy as I am. I suspect I could bring a lot to the life of a child. I also suspect that I could be just as damaging to one as any abusive and horrible, or even neglectful parent you read about in the news, simply because I am selfish.
I wonder if having a baby would get rid of a lot of that selfishness and laziness. Mostly I don't, though, because I know it probably wouldn't entirely. I'd act like I do towards the cat when she wakes me up every fifteen minutes on a work-night; eventually snap and scream at it and momentarily not care if I hurt it. Every parent snaps every now and then, but I'd do it often, every time the baby disrupted my doing something necessary, something I really, really wanted to do, prevented me from getting something, doing something for myself, enjoying myself.
I'd scream at a toddler, at a child, at a teenager. I don't have enough control over myself, my temper, and my patience. I don't know if I ought to risk finding out if motherhood would help with that. I suspect it wouldn't, much.
Maybe, like with any of my projects, I'd be gung-ho about it for a while, and then gradually lose interest. I'd lose interest in my child. That's a horribly sobering thought.
Then I think I'm being far too hard on myself. Maybe I'd transfer all my interest to the baby. After all, a baby is a never-ending craft project! A baby gives you things to write about, and communities to join, and all the intangible things like love and warmth! But why would I need a baby for all those things?
A baby is...a lot of money. But a baby doesn't have to be as much as we think it does, if you don't use disposable diapers, buy used clothing or accept hand-me-downs, breastfeed as long as possible, co-sleep for a while. But a baby is still more expensive than NOT having a baby.
Do I actually want a baby, or do I simply want the security of always having someone to love me and take care of me? Do I actually want a baby, or do I want what society tells me having a baby will do for me? Do I actually want a baby, or do I just want an excuse for unhappiness, or a catalyst for change, or an experiment to make me happy? Do I just want something that is wholly mine, some trace to leave on the world when I die? Am I only afraid that my DNA will die out?
These are the things that go through my head when my biological clock goes off with the force of a thousand sirens and punches my rapidly-aging ovaries in the face. I never really know the answer to these questions. I never really know what I want. But that doesn't make me any less jealous when I see a baby in the supermarket, read the birth announcement of a friend's.
I guess since I know that, barring a birth control mishap, I will likely never have one, I will always secretly, deep down inside, maybe possibly kinda-sorta want one.
Because we always want what we can't have. Human nature, and all.
I waver between the idealized version of motherhood and the absolute hatred of the very idea of having to permanently deal with one of these brats. Neither is really all that healthy.
I suspect I have the potential to be an excellent mother. I also suspect that that potential would be largely unfulfilled, as lazy as I am. I suspect I could bring a lot to the life of a child. I also suspect that I could be just as damaging to one as any abusive and horrible, or even neglectful parent you read about in the news, simply because I am selfish.
I wonder if having a baby would get rid of a lot of that selfishness and laziness. Mostly I don't, though, because I know it probably wouldn't entirely. I'd act like I do towards the cat when she wakes me up every fifteen minutes on a work-night; eventually snap and scream at it and momentarily not care if I hurt it. Every parent snaps every now and then, but I'd do it often, every time the baby disrupted my doing something necessary, something I really, really wanted to do, prevented me from getting something, doing something for myself, enjoying myself.
I'd scream at a toddler, at a child, at a teenager. I don't have enough control over myself, my temper, and my patience. I don't know if I ought to risk finding out if motherhood would help with that. I suspect it wouldn't, much.
Maybe, like with any of my projects, I'd be gung-ho about it for a while, and then gradually lose interest. I'd lose interest in my child. That's a horribly sobering thought.
Then I think I'm being far too hard on myself. Maybe I'd transfer all my interest to the baby. After all, a baby is a never-ending craft project! A baby gives you things to write about, and communities to join, and all the intangible things like love and warmth! But why would I need a baby for all those things?
A baby is...a lot of money. But a baby doesn't have to be as much as we think it does, if you don't use disposable diapers, buy used clothing or accept hand-me-downs, breastfeed as long as possible, co-sleep for a while. But a baby is still more expensive than NOT having a baby.
Do I actually want a baby, or do I simply want the security of always having someone to love me and take care of me? Do I actually want a baby, or do I want what society tells me having a baby will do for me? Do I actually want a baby, or do I just want an excuse for unhappiness, or a catalyst for change, or an experiment to make me happy? Do I just want something that is wholly mine, some trace to leave on the world when I die? Am I only afraid that my DNA will die out?
These are the things that go through my head when my biological clock goes off with the force of a thousand sirens and punches my rapidly-aging ovaries in the face. I never really know the answer to these questions. I never really know what I want. But that doesn't make me any less jealous when I see a baby in the supermarket, read the birth announcement of a friend's.
I guess since I know that, barring a birth control mishap, I will likely never have one, I will always secretly, deep down inside, maybe possibly kinda-sorta want one.
Because we always want what we can't have. Human nature, and all.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
In the attempt to NOT be a recluse
I am very bad at making friends, and pretty bad at keeping friends, both because I am a loner by nature and because I am also conveniently scared of people. I was actually pretty lucky to meet Hubs, considering he is also something of a loner by nature, although he is most emphatically not scared of people.
Anyway, I've been lucky enough to meet some great people through Husband. He had a large-ish crowd that he hung out with when I first started dating him, but gradually he drifted away from most of them and chose to keep his friendships only with people who were genuine friends, with whom he actually saw eye-to-eye and was not merely a convenience for.
J was one of these people. Over the last nine years, we've seen J more than anyone else, and once I got over my shyness (which only took about three years; oy), we have had some pretty good conversations, and good times. Hubs was one of J's groomsmen when J got married to a lovely lady (whom we'll also call J!), and both J and J came to our wedding just last year.
Anyway, now that the backstory has been established rather needlessly, I'll inform the world-- also rather needlessly-- that we're going camping with J and J and another of Hubs' friends this weekend!
Um. Yay!
We're going to Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, which sounds fabulous and which none of us has even been to. I love caves. I'd been to several in the western part of the U.S. as a kid, and I spent a wonderful few hours in Israel squeezing and edging and climbing through a small cave that was being excavated for archaeological purposes, but never anything like this!
I'm excited. I love camping. I've never really minded being a little uncomfortable because it's such an adventure to me just sleeping somewhere not in my own bed (I'm easily amused). Add to that the prospect of hiking, cave-walking, cooking over a fire, toasting marshmallows, looking up at the stars as I fall asleep...and doing all this with friends, even? HELL YEAH.
We're also going to be going geocaching a little while we're there. We looked for a few geocaches the day before our anniversary, just to see what the fuss was about, and we concluded that it was pretty fun. The caches we located were not exactly difficult to find, nor in particularly exciting locations, so maybe it wasn't quite as fun as some people think-- we agreed that it was kind of silly to look for caches just for the sake of looking (like in parking lots...), when you could be looking for them in gorgeous areas and on nice long off-the-beaten-path hikes. But! There are plenty in the Mammoth Cave area that promise to be beautiful finds, and that has fired us up again!
So all in all, it promises to be a full, fun, and rewarding experience. Only problem? We have to check in to the campsite around noon, and it's a six and a half hour drive.
Meaning...we need to leave around 5:30 am.
....let's hope the drive is the worst part of the weekend.
Anyway, I've been lucky enough to meet some great people through Husband. He had a large-ish crowd that he hung out with when I first started dating him, but gradually he drifted away from most of them and chose to keep his friendships only with people who were genuine friends, with whom he actually saw eye-to-eye and was not merely a convenience for.
J was one of these people. Over the last nine years, we've seen J more than anyone else, and once I got over my shyness (which only took about three years; oy), we have had some pretty good conversations, and good times. Hubs was one of J's groomsmen when J got married to a lovely lady (whom we'll also call J!), and both J and J came to our wedding just last year.
Anyway, now that the backstory has been established rather needlessly, I'll inform the world-- also rather needlessly-- that we're going camping with J and J and another of Hubs' friends this weekend!
Um. Yay!
We're going to Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, which sounds fabulous and which none of us has even been to. I love caves. I'd been to several in the western part of the U.S. as a kid, and I spent a wonderful few hours in Israel squeezing and edging and climbing through a small cave that was being excavated for archaeological purposes, but never anything like this!
I'm excited. I love camping. I've never really minded being a little uncomfortable because it's such an adventure to me just sleeping somewhere not in my own bed (I'm easily amused). Add to that the prospect of hiking, cave-walking, cooking over a fire, toasting marshmallows, looking up at the stars as I fall asleep...and doing all this with friends, even? HELL YEAH.
We're also going to be going geocaching a little while we're there. We looked for a few geocaches the day before our anniversary, just to see what the fuss was about, and we concluded that it was pretty fun. The caches we located were not exactly difficult to find, nor in particularly exciting locations, so maybe it wasn't quite as fun as some people think-- we agreed that it was kind of silly to look for caches just for the sake of looking (like in parking lots...), when you could be looking for them in gorgeous areas and on nice long off-the-beaten-path hikes. But! There are plenty in the Mammoth Cave area that promise to be beautiful finds, and that has fired us up again!
So all in all, it promises to be a full, fun, and rewarding experience. Only problem? We have to check in to the campsite around noon, and it's a six and a half hour drive.
Meaning...we need to leave around 5:30 am.
....let's hope the drive is the worst part of the weekend.
Because I really needed an incentive to keep gardening!
I think I've already established the fact that I'm fairly lazy.
It takes a lot of determination and interest to keep me going once I've begun a project, to the extent that I'm intensely proud whenever I manage to finish one. As has also been established, this is not a good thing.
One of the projects I'm most guilty of slacking on is housework. I enjoy doing the dishes (I know, weird, right?), and I don't mind the laundry, and I usually undergo a spate of "picking up" every few days, but other than that, it's a no-go. Hubs actually does more housework than I do (although I do all the cooking, which easily takes longer than almost anything he does around the house, but that's not the issue here).
I never really like this state of affairs, because while I don't mind a little clutter, or a little dirt, I hardly enjoy living in a sty. It's not a good thing when the dust bunnies on your living room floor resemble the tumbleweed in those Old West movies, both in size and quantity!
Well, this week I'm off from work, due to a fortuitous Labor Day and the need to use up all my vacation days before the fiscal year ends in October, so I figured I had no excuse. I would clean the gosh-darned house. And I did! I was very proud of myself. I dusted, swept all the floors, did the dishes and laundry (of course), cleaned the bathrooms, and even-- ye gods!-- mopped. That's some hard-core shit for me there.
I also tackled our over-grown garden.
When our house was placed in its current location, the ground had to be leveled, which revealed all the glorious red clay underneath the topsoil. The grass still hasn't come back all the way, and we really, really want it to, so we perhaps haven't been quite as timely in trimming the grass (and weeds, let's not kid ourselves) in the garden around our house. It had started to get really thick and tall, though, and I started getting worried that the nice lush thick undergrowth would both choke out our straggling Very Organically-Grown tomatoes and the few flowers the clay hasn't killed, and be a wonderful hiding ground for snakes.
Did I mention I'm terrified of snakes?
I live in the wrong area for my fear, snakes being rather common in rural areas and all. My mother-in-law keeps telling me all these wonderful stories about her sister finding a huge copperhead on her porch one morning, or warning us about the cottonmouth they saw at the creek the other day, or the rattlesnake the phone company men killed when they were setting up our phone line, oh my god. Believe it or not, though, I've lived here for almost three years and have only seen a couple of black ratsnakes, which don't really scare me as much as they're not poisonous.
But I digress. As usual. Anyway, Hubs and I decided to tackle our garden. I armed up with some work gloves and got to pulling the bigger of the weeds, he broke out the weed whacker and set to chiseling away at the aforementioned lush grass.
Around the halfway point, as Hubs was neatening up the very bushy area behind our air conditioning unit, the weed whacker decided to die and would not be resurrected without a new whacking cord. Since I'd been yanking weeds for an hour already and was pretty gung-ho by that point, I decided to just start yanking the grass up.
I yanked and yanked, reached out to grab a new handful...
...and jumped back with a shriek, as that particular handful had been about four inches from a coiled-up baby copperhead!
Given my fear of snakes, I feel I redeemed myself by not immediately hightailing it out of there and hiding under the covers until I knew it was gone, gone, gone. Instead I just turned very pale and stayed a decorous ten feet away. I even went back over to take another peek at it! I think Hubs was proud of me.
We weren't sure what to do about it, exactly, since we didn't really want to kill it, but it had to be dealt with, as our indoor/outdoor cat goes outside by herself and it would probably be best if she didn't have to deal with a known poisonous snake residing next to our house. We were actually surprised it was still there, since Hubs had been running that noisy weed whacker not a foot away from its head for a while, yet it hadn't budged.
So we decided, since the whacker was busted and all, to just go inside and wait until Hubs' dad got home from work so we could ask him how he dealt with the copperheads he finds. I made the cat come with us, which pissed her off, but I figure pissed-off cat >>>>> dead cat.
A few hours later, pissed-off cat <<<<< potential risk, so Hubs and I went outside, armed with a shovel and a rake, to see if we could flush it out.
IT WAS GONE.
We poked around in the remaining grass, making sure it hadn't just moved over a few inches, and even checked around both sides of the house, but Baby Copperhead had disappeared.
...Sad to say, that almost scares me worse than knowing exactly where it is. :-(
I think I will not be pulling weeds by hand for a little while.
It takes a lot of determination and interest to keep me going once I've begun a project, to the extent that I'm intensely proud whenever I manage to finish one. As has also been established, this is not a good thing.
One of the projects I'm most guilty of slacking on is housework. I enjoy doing the dishes (I know, weird, right?), and I don't mind the laundry, and I usually undergo a spate of "picking up" every few days, but other than that, it's a no-go. Hubs actually does more housework than I do (although I do all the cooking, which easily takes longer than almost anything he does around the house, but that's not the issue here).
I never really like this state of affairs, because while I don't mind a little clutter, or a little dirt, I hardly enjoy living in a sty. It's not a good thing when the dust bunnies on your living room floor resemble the tumbleweed in those Old West movies, both in size and quantity!
Well, this week I'm off from work, due to a fortuitous Labor Day and the need to use up all my vacation days before the fiscal year ends in October, so I figured I had no excuse. I would clean the gosh-darned house. And I did! I was very proud of myself. I dusted, swept all the floors, did the dishes and laundry (of course), cleaned the bathrooms, and even-- ye gods!-- mopped. That's some hard-core shit for me there.
I also tackled our over-grown garden.
When our house was placed in its current location, the ground had to be leveled, which revealed all the glorious red clay underneath the topsoil. The grass still hasn't come back all the way, and we really, really want it to, so we perhaps haven't been quite as timely in trimming the grass (and weeds, let's not kid ourselves) in the garden around our house. It had started to get really thick and tall, though, and I started getting worried that the nice lush thick undergrowth would both choke out our straggling Very Organically-Grown tomatoes and the few flowers the clay hasn't killed, and be a wonderful hiding ground for snakes.
Did I mention I'm terrified of snakes?
I live in the wrong area for my fear, snakes being rather common in rural areas and all. My mother-in-law keeps telling me all these wonderful stories about her sister finding a huge copperhead on her porch one morning, or warning us about the cottonmouth they saw at the creek the other day, or the rattlesnake the phone company men killed when they were setting up our phone line, oh my god. Believe it or not, though, I've lived here for almost three years and have only seen a couple of black ratsnakes, which don't really scare me as much as they're not poisonous.
But I digress. As usual. Anyway, Hubs and I decided to tackle our garden. I armed up with some work gloves and got to pulling the bigger of the weeds, he broke out the weed whacker and set to chiseling away at the aforementioned lush grass.
Around the halfway point, as Hubs was neatening up the very bushy area behind our air conditioning unit, the weed whacker decided to die and would not be resurrected without a new whacking cord. Since I'd been yanking weeds for an hour already and was pretty gung-ho by that point, I decided to just start yanking the grass up.
I yanked and yanked, reached out to grab a new handful...
...and jumped back with a shriek, as that particular handful had been about four inches from a coiled-up baby copperhead!
Given my fear of snakes, I feel I redeemed myself by not immediately hightailing it out of there and hiding under the covers until I knew it was gone, gone, gone. Instead I just turned very pale and stayed a decorous ten feet away. I even went back over to take another peek at it! I think Hubs was proud of me.
We weren't sure what to do about it, exactly, since we didn't really want to kill it, but it had to be dealt with, as our indoor/outdoor cat goes outside by herself and it would probably be best if she didn't have to deal with a known poisonous snake residing next to our house. We were actually surprised it was still there, since Hubs had been running that noisy weed whacker not a foot away from its head for a while, yet it hadn't budged.
So we decided, since the whacker was busted and all, to just go inside and wait until Hubs' dad got home from work so we could ask him how he dealt with the copperheads he finds. I made the cat come with us, which pissed her off, but I figure pissed-off cat >>>>> dead cat.
A few hours later, pissed-off cat <<<<< potential risk, so Hubs and I went outside, armed with a shovel and a rake, to see if we could flush it out.
IT WAS GONE.
We poked around in the remaining grass, making sure it hadn't just moved over a few inches, and even checked around both sides of the house, but Baby Copperhead had disappeared.
...Sad to say, that almost scares me worse than knowing exactly where it is. :-(
I think I will not be pulling weeds by hand for a little while.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Aaaand it happened just like I thought, or "Category 2"
Whenever I start a new long-term-ish project, it goes one of two ways:
1. I keep at it over time, persevering in my interest because it is something that is important to me. After a period of steady work, I bring the project to its completion or have done it long enough that it's a permanent habit and thus likely to continue without having to browbeat myself into working on it. Ergo, a happy ending and all is smiles.
Notable projects in this category include: my three National Novel-Writing Month novels, the wall-hangings I've embroidered for my parents and myself, and our wedding scrapbook.
2. After a brief period of intense obsession with the project, during which I work on it CONSTANTLY, am always thinking of new things to do with it, fiddle with its appearance, etc. etc., my interest abruptly wanes and the project goes by the wayside, buried in the Idea Graveyard with all my other uncompleted projects. And my ability to not write run-on sentences. Apparently. Ahem.
Notable projects in this category include:...well, pretty much everything else.
My new blog? Would be under the number 2 category.
I suppose, unlike many of the people whose blogs I read, I have something of a lackluster life.
I don't have a fantastically exciting job (though the actual workload has ramped up a bit in the last month, though who doesn't have this happen occasionally?) or even the kind of job that generates interesting stories, since it mostly involves filing, data entry, and sitting in my office alone.
I lack children who say cute/funny/intelligent things or get into horrific/surprisingly funny/compassion-inducing situations (not that I'm complaining about the latter-- Munchausen-by-proxy-by-Internet is not my intention or desire!) or even normal, every-day children that I can gripe about because it's fun.
I don't have many friends in the area, and there's only so much one can write about people one doesn't physically interact with on a regular basis ("Dear Diary, today I posted a smiley-face on Lila's Facebook page, and she posted one back, just for me! Gee whillikers!"). Being something of a recluse, I don't really care to go out much and find new people either, both out of fear and sheer laziness.
I don't do particularly exciting activities like travel to exotic locales, rock-climb the Himalayas, do roadie-work for a touring local-famous band, sail the Seven Seas with just me and my trusty cat by my side, or the like. I have traveled a good bit, but I've already written about it plenty.
What I like to do is cook semi-exotic food, though I prefer using a recipe and can't really be bothered to make up my own very often, or take pretty pictures of what I do make.
I have a husband who is also cheap...ahem, thrifty like myself. He works an equally lackluster job, and we don't go out much. He also distrusts the public nature of the internet, and prefers not to have too many details about himself splashed across the web; it was all I could do to get the poor man to have a Facebook. *grin*
I like to read, though I don't really enjoy writing book reviews all that much.
I like to start (and occasionally finish) new art projects, though somehow I always forget to take pictures of the process, or our old and decrepit digital camera will need new batteries and GOD HELP US there won't be any in the house.
I like to go on the internet, but as the places I habituate are not particularly new or shocking (although some of the webcomics I read are not safe for work-- horrors!), there's not a whole lot of point in writing about them.
I like thinking about things, but many of these things are too intimate to share with the internet, and I'm already sharing the ones I'm comfortable discussing. Also, I have a problem with criticism, meaning I probably shouldn't be on the internet at all!
I like to make brave and idealistic declarations over how I will become a better person and change my life in a positive way and do all kinds of interesting things that will be good to remember when I'm old (and maybe possibly have the side effect of being fun to write about). Somehow most of these fall into Category 2 up there.
I am...a pretty normal person who does pretty normal things and is also really, REALLY lazy.
So I wanted to challenge myself by writing a blog to make it seem like that's not the case. And we all (and by "we all" I mean "I") see how that's going.
However...
Sometimes my projects in Category 2 enter a third category:
3. After a period of not working on the project, thinking about it, or even looking at it, all of a sudden I'll pick it up again, and realize, "Oh yeah, I really enjoyed doing this. Why'd I stop again?" Promptly I begin again and, more often than not, actually finish it. And thus, Category 2 enters Category 1 by way of Category 3. Or something like that. Math is not my strong suit.
Maybe it's not too late?
1. I keep at it over time, persevering in my interest because it is something that is important to me. After a period of steady work, I bring the project to its completion or have done it long enough that it's a permanent habit and thus likely to continue without having to browbeat myself into working on it. Ergo, a happy ending and all is smiles.
Notable projects in this category include: my three National Novel-Writing Month novels, the wall-hangings I've embroidered for my parents and myself, and our wedding scrapbook.
2. After a brief period of intense obsession with the project, during which I work on it CONSTANTLY, am always thinking of new things to do with it, fiddle with its appearance, etc. etc., my interest abruptly wanes and the project goes by the wayside, buried in the Idea Graveyard with all my other uncompleted projects. And my ability to not write run-on sentences. Apparently. Ahem.
Notable projects in this category include:...well, pretty much everything else.
My new blog? Would be under the number 2 category.
I suppose, unlike many of the people whose blogs I read, I have something of a lackluster life.
I don't have a fantastically exciting job (though the actual workload has ramped up a bit in the last month, though who doesn't have this happen occasionally?) or even the kind of job that generates interesting stories, since it mostly involves filing, data entry, and sitting in my office alone.
I lack children who say cute/funny/intelligent things or get into horrific/surprisingly funny/compassion-inducing situations (not that I'm complaining about the latter-- Munchausen-by-proxy-by-Internet is not my intention or desire!) or even normal, every-day children that I can gripe about because it's fun.
I don't have many friends in the area, and there's only so much one can write about people one doesn't physically interact with on a regular basis ("Dear Diary, today I posted a smiley-face on Lila's Facebook page, and she posted one back, just for me! Gee whillikers!"). Being something of a recluse, I don't really care to go out much and find new people either, both out of fear and sheer laziness.
I don't do particularly exciting activities like travel to exotic locales, rock-climb the Himalayas, do roadie-work for a touring local-famous band, sail the Seven Seas with just me and my trusty cat by my side, or the like. I have traveled a good bit, but I've already written about it plenty.
What I like to do is cook semi-exotic food, though I prefer using a recipe and can't really be bothered to make up my own very often, or take pretty pictures of what I do make.
I have a husband who is also cheap...ahem, thrifty like myself. He works an equally lackluster job, and we don't go out much. He also distrusts the public nature of the internet, and prefers not to have too many details about himself splashed across the web; it was all I could do to get the poor man to have a Facebook. *grin*
I like to read, though I don't really enjoy writing book reviews all that much.
I like to start (and occasionally finish) new art projects, though somehow I always forget to take pictures of the process, or our old and decrepit digital camera will need new batteries and GOD HELP US there won't be any in the house.
I like to go on the internet, but as the places I habituate are not particularly new or shocking (although some of the webcomics I read are not safe for work-- horrors!), there's not a whole lot of point in writing about them.
I like thinking about things, but many of these things are too intimate to share with the internet, and I'm already sharing the ones I'm comfortable discussing. Also, I have a problem with criticism, meaning I probably shouldn't be on the internet at all!
I like to make brave and idealistic declarations over how I will become a better person and change my life in a positive way and do all kinds of interesting things that will be good to remember when I'm old (and maybe possibly have the side effect of being fun to write about). Somehow most of these fall into Category 2 up there.
I am...a pretty normal person who does pretty normal things and is also really, REALLY lazy.
So I wanted to challenge myself by writing a blog to make it seem like that's not the case. And we all (and by "we all" I mean "I") see how that's going.
However...
Sometimes my projects in Category 2 enter a third category:
3. After a period of not working on the project, thinking about it, or even looking at it, all of a sudden I'll pick it up again, and realize, "Oh yeah, I really enjoyed doing this. Why'd I stop again?" Promptly I begin again and, more often than not, actually finish it. And thus, Category 2 enters Category 1 by way of Category 3. Or something like that. Math is not my strong suit.
Maybe it's not too late?
Monday, August 31, 2009
Our very first wedding anniversary!
It seems strange to say that today, August 31st, 2009, is Hubs' and my first anniversary, namely because it's not strictly true for several reasons:
1. We've been together (dating, that is) since late August, 2000--that's a total of nine years for those whose math skills are even worse than mine, and nine years are just one shy of a decade, which is...my god, a DECADE. We've been together over a third of my lifetime! Heck, we've been dating longer than many people stay married!
2. Speaking of dating, we don't actually know what day it was we started. We know it was late August, because I have nine-year-old e-mails to prove exactly what day Hubs first confessed his undying love and professed offers of lifelong worship and flowers to me--I kid. However, no clue, electronic or otherwise, what day we even went on our first official date. It's silly. I mean, we went to a Jayhawks concert (and made out the whole time and pretty much didn't hear any of the show but that's entirely beside the point) so you'd think we'd have ticket stubs, but NO. For all we know, it was August 28th. Or August 30th. So our anniversary date is a FRAUD ANYHOW. Ahem.
3. While it was true that our wedding was a year ago on this date, we actually got the marriage license completed at the county jail (don't ask) on August 5th. Our witnesses were a cop and a cafeteria worker, and my ring was the engagement ring I'd been wearing for over a year already at that point. So by that route it's been several weeks OVER a year.
You see how it's all confusing. But it doesn't really matter anyway.
What matters is that all this time we've been together.
We've endured eight moves and a break-up, lived in four different cities, dealt with numerous job changes and career crises, started a million and a half projects together, taught each other how to cook, focused on raising a cantankerous and obnoxiously playful cat together, done homework together, cried and shouted and cheered and laughed together, chopped wood and planted flowers and bought a house together, visited Europe and the Caribbean and the beach and Baltimore together, laid in the grass and watched the stars and sunsets together, planned a wedding and been to two funerals and baked birthday cakes together, and gone through a metric ton of anime and video games together.
The past year has been...eventful, to say the least. But we've done it all together.
Happy anniversary, Hubs. I hope we continue doing things together for the rest of our lives.
1. We've been together (dating, that is) since late August, 2000--that's a total of nine years for those whose math skills are even worse than mine, and nine years are just one shy of a decade, which is...my god, a DECADE. We've been together over a third of my lifetime! Heck, we've been dating longer than many people stay married!
2. Speaking of dating, we don't actually know what day it was we started. We know it was late August, because I have nine-year-old e-mails to prove exactly what day Hubs first confessed his undying love and professed offers of lifelong worship and flowers to me--I kid. However, no clue, electronic or otherwise, what day we even went on our first official date. It's silly. I mean, we went to a Jayhawks concert (and made out the whole time and pretty much didn't hear any of the show but that's entirely beside the point) so you'd think we'd have ticket stubs, but NO. For all we know, it was August 28th. Or August 30th. So our anniversary date is a FRAUD ANYHOW. Ahem.
3. While it was true that our wedding was a year ago on this date, we actually got the marriage license completed at the county jail (don't ask) on August 5th. Our witnesses were a cop and a cafeteria worker, and my ring was the engagement ring I'd been wearing for over a year already at that point. So by that route it's been several weeks OVER a year.
You see how it's all confusing. But it doesn't really matter anyway.
What matters is that all this time we've been together.
We've endured eight moves and a break-up, lived in four different cities, dealt with numerous job changes and career crises, started a million and a half projects together, taught each other how to cook, focused on raising a cantankerous and obnoxiously playful cat together, done homework together, cried and shouted and cheered and laughed together, chopped wood and planted flowers and bought a house together, visited Europe and the Caribbean and the beach and Baltimore together, laid in the grass and watched the stars and sunsets together, planned a wedding and been to two funerals and baked birthday cakes together, and gone through a metric ton of anime and video games together.
The past year has been...eventful, to say the least. But we've done it all together.
Happy anniversary, Hubs. I hope we continue doing things together for the rest of our lives.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
My manifesto
In the interest of saving the money I do not have, reducing my ecological footprint, and in general being an awesome human being worthy of a cookie and a gold star, I will/will not do the following:
I will not personally use my own money to purchase full-price clothing at retail clothing stores anymore (notice how I said "my own money"-- if my mother feels like spending a little on me, I will let her, but it will only be good-quality stuff, I swear).
I will purchase them only at thrift stores and for a damn skippy discount at the regular stores. Hell, the discount better be damn skippy because half the $15 t-shirts I bought at Kohl's are falling apart, whereas the t-shirt I got in high school only got thrown away because my upper arms got too fat to fit in the cute elasticized sleeves.
I will not buy any new art supplies anymore but will instead use up what I have right now.
Once I eventually run out of my mounds and mounds of unused art supplies, I will investigate the use of items called "coupons." I hear they're useful. I will also get them at thrift stores, yard sales, and the like, and learn the art of re-purposing material from items that are not art supplies but can still be used as such.
I will learn skills that will be useful should the world crumble to pieces in a horrible electricity-less apocalyptic meltdown. This includes but is not limited to: learning how to light a fire without matches or a lighter, learning how to sew my own clothing from re-purposed fabric, learning how to cook on an open fire, yadda yadda yadda. Pretty much everything in the US Army Survival Manual, which is pretty damn thick, let me tell you.
I will not engage in impulse buying, waste my money on things I can do/make/prepare myself when all it takes is a little elbow grease and/or legwork, or let the devil on my shoulder trick me into getting one delectable pumpkin chocolate chip muffin for $1.69 when that $1.69 could be saved and put into something a little less ephemeral maybe, like, oh, I don't know, my car payment.
I will stay away from refined sugars (which pretty much cuts all pumpkin chocolate chip muffins out of my life forever) that are purchased with my own money. Yeah, you see? There's a qualifier thereor rather a cheap way to get out of it. Who ever buys me sweets anyway? My mother and my mother-in-law. My mother is 360 miles away, and my mother-in-law usually prefers to stuff me with chicken wings and fresh garden vegetables. And I personally believe that most things in moderation are okay, including sugar. Just...more moderate that I usually am. Which is not at all.
I will examine my spending habits and see where I can cut costs. Currently I don't actually spend very much because, well, I don't have shit to spend, but in examining every purchase I make, surely I can figure out a way to cut back a little bit, even if it's just a very little bit.
I will take care of my body. It is the only one I have. It will be better for a little exercise more often than I get it, and no, 80 push-ups a day hardly count. The heart is a muscle too and it ain't gettin' shit. I will do this by, at the very least, walking to the mailbox and back every day. And before you say that doesn't seem like much, keep in mind that it's a good half-mile to our mailbox, with an altitude change of 50-100 feet. Uphill. Both ways.
I think that's all the life-changing commitments I want to, er, commit to right now. Mostly because I likely will not follow most of them for nearly as long as my happily-idealistic mind thinks I will, and my fragile emo-kid ego cannot take such grievous disappointment in myself. Actually, Fragile Emo-Kid Ego thrives on self-loathing. Never mind, then.
I will not personally use my own money to purchase full-price clothing at retail clothing stores anymore (notice how I said "my own money"-- if my mother feels like spending a little on me, I will let her, but it will only be good-quality stuff, I swear).
I will purchase them only at thrift stores and for a damn skippy discount at the regular stores. Hell, the discount better be damn skippy because half the $15 t-shirts I bought at Kohl's are falling apart, whereas the t-shirt I got in high school only got thrown away because my upper arms got too fat to fit in the cute elasticized sleeves.
I will not buy any new art supplies anymore but will instead use up what I have right now.
Once I eventually run out of my mounds and mounds of unused art supplies, I will investigate the use of items called "coupons." I hear they're useful. I will also get them at thrift stores, yard sales, and the like, and learn the art of re-purposing material from items that are not art supplies but can still be used as such.
I will learn skills that will be useful should the world crumble to pieces in a horrible electricity-less apocalyptic meltdown. This includes but is not limited to: learning how to light a fire without matches or a lighter, learning how to sew my own clothing from re-purposed fabric, learning how to cook on an open fire, yadda yadda yadda. Pretty much everything in the US Army Survival Manual, which is pretty damn thick, let me tell you.
I will not engage in impulse buying, waste my money on things I can do/make/prepare myself when all it takes is a little elbow grease and/or legwork, or let the devil on my shoulder trick me into getting one delectable pumpkin chocolate chip muffin for $1.69 when that $1.69 could be saved and put into something a little less ephemeral maybe, like, oh, I don't know, my car payment.
I will stay away from refined sugars (which pretty much cuts all pumpkin chocolate chip muffins out of my life forever) that are purchased with my own money. Yeah, you see? There's a qualifier there
I will examine my spending habits and see where I can cut costs. Currently I don't actually spend very much because, well, I don't have shit to spend, but in examining every purchase I make, surely I can figure out a way to cut back a little bit, even if it's just a very little bit.
I will take care of my body. It is the only one I have. It will be better for a little exercise more often than I get it, and no, 80 push-ups a day hardly count. The heart is a muscle too and it ain't gettin' shit. I will do this by, at the very least, walking to the mailbox and back every day. And before you say that doesn't seem like much, keep in mind that it's a good half-mile to our mailbox, with an altitude change of 50-100 feet. Uphill. Both ways.
I think that's all the life-changing commitments I want to, er, commit to right now. Mostly because I likely will not follow most of them for nearly as long as my happily-idealistic mind thinks I will, and my fragile emo-kid ego cannot take such grievous disappointment in myself. Actually, Fragile Emo-Kid Ego thrives on self-loathing. Never mind, then.
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Art Sequitur
Okeedokee now!
Argh, so much distraction. If I could sit down and type out every project I want to begin RIGHT NOW I think I would fill up an entire page. I consider it a plus that I managed to work on my one "official" project for about fifteen minutes last night. Oy, is that not pathetic?
Okay. This blog is really not about me whining, though 2 out of 2 entries so far have included it. Boy, I'm not doing so well at this, am I?
Let me talk about my "official" project. I say that like it's some uber-secret ultra-creative prototype-dealie. It's not. I'm making a grown-up picture book out of fabric, similar in structure to this felt book I made for a swap on craftster.org. I wrote a silly little story and am going to include one line on every page, like a kid's book, only each page is going to be abstract and crazy and filled with my own particular flavor of fabric art.
It's even a collaborative project! Husband is writing music to go along with each page, because he likes playing around with his music programs. The piece he wrote for the cover is not bad. It's not uber-professional, given that he has had about a semester's worth of actual musical training, but in my opinion it captures the mood of what I was going for pretty well.
So in the end, we'll have a whole little cloth book and a CD of ambient music. I'm working on the second page of it now.
It's very exciting, I know.
I like big projects like this, though, where I work on them steadily for weeks and then have something to show for it. It's weird, actually, because my patience level is approximately that of a 2-year-old hyperactive child, but it makes the payoff even better. Except I usually am in despair over how my product does not match my vision, alas, alack, oh what a world! I guess that's par for the course in the World of Artists®.
I will end this with a non sequitur: I have to pee. TATA!!!
Argh, so much distraction. If I could sit down and type out every project I want to begin RIGHT NOW I think I would fill up an entire page. I consider it a plus that I managed to work on my one "official" project for about fifteen minutes last night. Oy, is that not pathetic?
Okay. This blog is really not about me whining, though 2 out of 2 entries so far have included it. Boy, I'm not doing so well at this, am I?
Let me talk about my "official" project. I say that like it's some uber-secret ultra-creative prototype-dealie. It's not. I'm making a grown-up picture book out of fabric, similar in structure to this felt book I made for a swap on craftster.org. I wrote a silly little story and am going to include one line on every page, like a kid's book, only each page is going to be abstract and crazy and filled with my own particular flavor of fabric art.
It's even a collaborative project! Husband is writing music to go along with each page, because he likes playing around with his music programs. The piece he wrote for the cover is not bad. It's not uber-professional, given that he has had about a semester's worth of actual musical training, but in my opinion it captures the mood of what I was going for pretty well.
So in the end, we'll have a whole little cloth book and a CD of ambient music. I'm working on the second page of it now.
It's very exciting, I know.
I like big projects like this, though, where I work on them steadily for weeks and then have something to show for it. It's weird, actually, because my patience level is approximately that of a 2-year-old hyperactive child, but it makes the payoff even better. Except I usually am in despair over how my product does not match my vision, alas, alack, oh what a world! I guess that's par for the course in the World of Artists®.
I will end this with a non sequitur: I have to pee. TATA!!!
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Anhedonia
an⋅he⋅do⋅ni⋅a /ˌænhiˈdoʊniə/
–noun Psychology. Lack of pleasure or of the capacity to experience it.
I'm finding it hard to write lately.
Used to be I could sit down at a computer and just let the words flow out. Usually once they started, they wouldn't stop. I had a lot going on in my head-- story plots, rants, whinings, little bits of fancy that I wanted to document in case they ever came in handy later on.
I wrote because I find it hard to talk to people, and if the words didn't come out one way, they'd have to come out another or I'd explode.
Now, though. Now I'm hard-pressed even to come up with a Tweet. 140 characters and I can't even manage that. It's like the numbness that steals over my brain when confronted with social interaction has taken to stealing everything else as well.
What's funny is this: when I was first diagnosed with depression, all I did was write. I was miserable, so I bled the pain onto paper. I wrote hundreds of stories and poems and drabbles, mostly pretty angsty and whiny, sure, but it was a means of coping, and a healthy one at that.
Then I went on antidepressants, and the flood instantly dried up into a trickle. I could still write my laundry-list journal entries, but nothing creative came out. I don't know if I even had many ideas anymore. The creative center of my brain (along with other key areas) felt wrapped in cotton wool, dull, mute, foggy. This lasted for roughly three years, and I always hated Paxil for robbing me of that time.
Then I weaned myself off the drugs. And slowly...slowly...slowly it came back. I wrote my first novel that year. I wrote two more in the two years after that. It was funny at first. Amazing! I can be happy AND creative! It's not like that anymore. I'm not sad right now, and I'm not happy. I just am.
The two journal entries I've written so far have taken days of thought and mustering of energies. I've had to browbeat myself into just sitting down and doing something. I don't know why this is, but I have to get back to the way I was.
I still have things to say-- they just aren't coming yet.
–noun Psychology. Lack of pleasure or of the capacity to experience it.
I'm finding it hard to write lately.
Used to be I could sit down at a computer and just let the words flow out. Usually once they started, they wouldn't stop. I had a lot going on in my head-- story plots, rants, whinings, little bits of fancy that I wanted to document in case they ever came in handy later on.
I wrote because I find it hard to talk to people, and if the words didn't come out one way, they'd have to come out another or I'd explode.
Now, though. Now I'm hard-pressed even to come up with a Tweet. 140 characters and I can't even manage that. It's like the numbness that steals over my brain when confronted with social interaction has taken to stealing everything else as well.
What's funny is this: when I was first diagnosed with depression, all I did was write. I was miserable, so I bled the pain onto paper. I wrote hundreds of stories and poems and drabbles, mostly pretty angsty and whiny, sure, but it was a means of coping, and a healthy one at that.
Then I went on antidepressants, and the flood instantly dried up into a trickle. I could still write my laundry-list journal entries, but nothing creative came out. I don't know if I even had many ideas anymore. The creative center of my brain (along with other key areas) felt wrapped in cotton wool, dull, mute, foggy. This lasted for roughly three years, and I always hated Paxil for robbing me of that time.
Then I weaned myself off the drugs. And slowly...slowly...slowly it came back. I wrote my first novel that year. I wrote two more in the two years after that. It was funny at first. Amazing! I can be happy AND creative! It's not like that anymore. I'm not sad right now, and I'm not happy. I just am.
The two journal entries I've written so far have taken days of thought and mustering of energies. I've had to browbeat myself into just sitting down and doing something. I don't know why this is, but I have to get back to the way I was.
I still have things to say-- they just aren't coming yet.
Saturday, August 1, 2009
It begins with off-color humor and whining like always
I plan to love myself someday.
Although it could be said that I already do love myself.
A couple of times a week, even.
*rimshot*
I am currently very distracted because as usual there's a million things I want to do right now, and they keep warring in my head until I can't really do any of them. Welcome to my world! I want to make a 24-hour zine (haven't done that in forever), embroider, write a crazy novel, go spontaneously traveling, cook, do the dishes (yeah, this one's my fave), and clean the house.
All these wonderful, worthwhile things to do.
Aaaaaaaand I'm on the computer.
Like I said-- welcome to my world.
Although it could be said that I already do love myself.
A couple of times a week, even.
*rimshot*
I am currently very distracted because as usual there's a million things I want to do right now, and they keep warring in my head until I can't really do any of them. Welcome to my world! I want to make a 24-hour zine (haven't done that in forever), embroider, write a crazy novel, go spontaneously traveling, cook, do the dishes (yeah, this one's my fave), and clean the house.
All these wonderful, worthwhile things to do.
Aaaaaaaand I'm on the computer.
Like I said-- welcome to my world.
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