No shit

Go read this, from Dr. B.

Curious Philosophy

Life lessons, gracie de Curious George:

"And the squirrel on his head was hungry..."

I think that kind of sums it all up, especially when stated by William H. Macy.

[Edited to correct the damned H. Thanks Trisha! You have saved me from a virtual eternity of looking like a dork! :) ]

A few things

Thank you. Really.

Better.

It's a start.

Think, thank, thunk

Well, crap.

I think The Depression is back.

I don't know. I don't want to jump the gun, and shit but I don't want to go back on those nice expensive drugs, but witness the telltale signs:

• Difficulty focusing on work
• Difficulty focusing on typical tasks
• Sleeping issues
• No appetite
• Fairly continuous feeling of anxiety
• Obsessing over really stupid shit
• Pretty much losing interest in pretty much everything

Aaaand we're coming up on a good 3 or 4 weeks here.

So.

There are still some non-medical things I haven't really put into full effect yet; I need to dig out the info I kept from my sessions last year, make specific times to get more exercise, plan out the diet better, blah blah blah. But. But.

There are some things in my head that make me sad right now. That's all, I guess.

Conversations from Bizarro World

The kids are watching "Dragon Tales"; I call them away for breakfast just as Max and Emmi are finishing their little dragon scale rhyme.

The Girl: EWWWWWW! GROSS!
The Boy and me: ?
TG: I don wanna fy with dagons in a lan uv BARF!

-------------------

Phone call with the Ex:

Ex: You need somebody extremely smart.
Me: I would settle for middling smart, even, at this point.
Ex: Well, I think he's gonna hafta be smart.
Me: Fine.
Ex: And I would say, pretty refined.
Me: Well, I don't know. I mean, I don't want somebody who's going to be going all esoteric on me all the time.
Ex: You know what you need? You need to date...
Me: A professor.
Ex: That's exactly what I was thinking!
Me: It'd do.
Ex: How old?
Me: I'm wide open. Any birthdate between 1960 and 1978.
Ex: 1978?
Me: I told you, I'm approaching desperation here!
Ex: That's like, what, how old is that?
Me: Ten years. That's the most I could stand.
Ex: What, you want to get them right out of college?
Me: SHUT UP! I said that was the Outer Limit. It isn't my preference!!
Ex: I think it's a little young, though.
Me: Well, so do I, I'm just saying that--HEY! Pot calling Kettle!!
Ex: I'd say somewhere between 40 and 45.
Me: That would certainly be my preference, but I'm like the choosy beggar here, dude.
Ex: An accent would be pretty good. Like maybe a British accent.
Me: Oh, sure, why not. Throw that in.
Ex: Like Hugh Grant.
Me: ??!! Hugh Grant?? Dear god, no. Try Collin Firth.
Ex: Who's that?
Me: You know, from Nanny McFee.
Ex: Oh, no way! He's a wus. Even Hugh Grant knocked him out.
Me: Shut up! He's a total sweetie! I am NOT dating Hugh Grant. Yuck!
Ex: No, you need a fighter.
Me: Uh, I think not. I can fight for myself, thanks. What I need is somebody who isn't all stressed out all the time.
Ex: Good luck with that.
Me: Yeah, yeah, I know.
Ex: All right, I'm on it.
Me: Good. Go. Find.

Why Sesame Street rocks...

Amy Sedaris is the guest on the street today. 'Nuff said.

Cry me a river

I've got a runner. This is what happens: The Boy messes up. And he realizes it. And he blurts out that he's sorry, gets a total panicked look on his face, and then takes off. Literally. Running. And then you either have to chase after him or ignore him until he comes back.

So on the one hand, this is a way to take the pressure off. I get that. He runs off, people come after him, and it isn't about how he's in trouble anymore. So I say to him, "Buddy. You've got to stop running away from stuff. You've got to stay and face up to it."

"But I'm just not that type of person!" he wails from downstairs (where yes, he'd run away to).

"What type of person is that?" I ask.

"The good type of person!" he sniffs. "I'm the other type of person! I'm the bad bad bad type of person!"

Oy vey.

No, I tell him, you aren't. But why do you run off? If you run off, you can't resolve the situation. I give him some examples of times he's run off so fast that he hasn't given the other person the chance to tell him it's okay and they aren't even upset. "But," he says, "I have to run away. Because I feel bad. And then I feel like crying." The tears start squeezing out of the corners of his eyes. "And I can't cry! I run away so no one will see me cry, because I can't help it, and only babies cry! And I don't want to be a baby! Everyone will know that I'm a baby!" He's crying really hard now, and covering up his head with the covers.

Where did this come from? Damn this American Man Shit. But I don't know, and he won't or can't tell me, where or from whom in particular this notion has come.

"That's completely not true," I insist. "I cry all the time."

"No you don't," comes the muffled response. "You never cry."

So much for all those sleepless nights thinking I'd scarred my kids crying while I was making dinner or reading them stories or wiping their butts. Hmm.

"Parents usually try not to cry in front of their kids, honey, because they don't want to upset them."

"Well it wouldn't upset me! It would just show me that it's okay!"

So I promised him I would cry more if he would promise to think about the fact that crying was actually something that everybody was made to do, and that it was good for you, and that if you never cried you couldn't get out the sad stuff. I am baffled.

Sundry

I've been rather short with the Girl lately, and I don't like it.

But let me first say, and I know this is eye-rolling-worthy, but it's absolutely true: You have No. Idea. how cute she is. I mean, the kid is Cute (tm). In fact, every interaction with pretty much every adult, in passing or otherwise, ends with them saying, "Ohhhhhh, she's so cute!"

This is getting dangerous. I mean, she gets away with shite (away from home) because of The Cuteness. Which is not a message we want to send to her little brain. Because you send that message, the next thing you know you get not just The Cute, but you get The Bratty. Not good.

Anyway, though, I am being too short with her, and that's not good. You know that thing where you hear your voice coming out of your body, and it's the Voice of Criticism? I don't like that voice.

Last week, a client actually said to me, "You know what your special gift in this world is? You are so calm! You can stay so calm and keep everyone else calm...it's amazing." And boy, did I get a good laugh outta that one. Hooboy.

We'll probably get our first snow today. S gave me an piece of extra carpeting she didn't want, and I put it in the basement, so we now have Unfinished Basement Playroom, complete with $5 Home De(s)pot painted concrete walls (sadly, they look a bit institutional, but can painted concrete ever not? I think I need to buy some funky spraypaint and get abstract), carpet-remnant carpeting, futon, blackboard painted-art table (formerly the second-hand table the Ex and I acquired when we first got hitched) and chairs, and all the toys and art stuff. I am ready to deal with Kids Stuck Indoors.

Approaching normalcy

Which is to say, pretty much back in the saddle. I'm wondering if last week's Mood Swing Bonanza was my bod's new middle-age reaction to stress? I realized on Saturday that the way I was feeling was pretty much exactly how I had felt (increasingly) for the year leading up to my stint on Lexapro. If you'll recall, that fun Depressive Episode exhibited itself much more as anxiety and high emotion than as mopey moping. And said depression was generally agreed (by the docs) to be caused by stress. So. Maybe a promotion, the ex's breakup with his fiance, and a disagreement with the landscaper was enough stress to throw me into a bit of a tailspin. Possibly.

Kind of along the lines of the way I work (in an overall sense), as soon as I realized this, I started feeling better. Although I still am not exactly pleased about where I am life-strategy-coping-wise, I do feel more myself this week. I think I can say that other than eating a half pan of rice krispie treats (damn their marshmallowy goodness!), things are coming around. I've actually managed to accomplish a few tasks around the house and on the job, as well as put some increased exercise into the schedule, and I think I'm going to pony up and go back on the Weight Watchers for a month (I'd gotten cheap and gone off it as I wasn't really following it very well, but now that I'm exercising more I have the bad feeling I'm also noshing more, which doesn't exactly equate with the goal of losing weight). If The Anxious comes back or seems to be lurking around after a few more weeks, I'll ask the doc about it; it's about time for my annual prodding anyway, and I should have my cholesterol and all that crap checked as well.

On a completely non-related subject, the Boy was wondering what instrument he might learn to play. The piano seemed a logical choice, seeing as how we have one, and I also pointed out to him that "Chicks dig a guy who plays the piano." "What?" he said, doing that eyebrow thing we in this family do so well, "Chicks dig? What does that mean?" And when I explained, "EWWWWW!! Mo-om! No way am I playing the piano, then." And then he started giggling.

And here's something that I have to write down so I never forget how cute it is to me: The Girl pointing out that there's "none more". "Only one more, Mama! Ohoh, now none more. There's just none more for you, sorry!"