Random Friday

Today is probably the best I have felt in weeks. I don't feel GREAT!!!! But I feel good. I made it through the day without feeling sick and tired and ready to bite off the head of anyone who comes in my office. I'm not sure if it's the Celexa starting to kick in, or if I'm just having a better day in general. Life is still pretty crazy. A lot going on that I'm not entirely sure how it will all work out. I know it will, but still, it's a cause of stress. But it's Friday, and even more it's Good Friday. At time that as I Christian to reflect on God's grace and love and remember that no matter what, I am not alone. That is such an amazing comfort for me.

So some random things for a Friday:

~Today is my mom's birthday. I love my mom though she can drive me absolutely crazy sometimes. She's taught me a lot and a huge reason I am who I am today. Happy birthday mom!

~Tomorrow is the last workshop day before Faire begins. Wow, I can't believe it's starting already. Sunday is dress rehearsal, which I will be missing to spend Easter with our families. But I plan to be out there tomorrow finishing setting up glade and getting ready. I am getting really excited for the upcoming season, all drama aside.

~Speaking of Easter, we will be having both sides of the family over to our place on Sunday for dinner. I love that we have a house big enough to host both families. Saves us the trouble of having to go between the two. I have all the food I need, and just need to pick up a few more things to be ready. I think it'll be a fund day.

~Poor Chris is getting a cold. I feel so bad. He's been under a lot of stress lately and I know this cold is not helping. Hopefully he'll get the rest he needs tomorrow to recover and hopefully I don't get whatever he has. I'm just now over the last cold. Don't need another one.

~I am in love with Sprouts. My boss told me about them a few weeks ago and ever since we've gone about once a week. I can do about half my shopping there and the prices are amazing. The food is also so fresh and mostly organic. I can also find stuff there that's hard to find other places like fresh Ahi Tuna steaks. They don't have a lot of stores open yet, but I suggest if you have one nearby, you should definitely check it out.

I think that's really all I got for now. I'll go over the weekend if anything interesting happens on Monday. Have a great weekend!

All For Nothin

So about a month ago I wrote about breaking my tooth, my beyond "ir"rational fear of dentists and my plan to work around insurance so that I wouldn't have to pay as much if I just waited a month.

So now it's the beginning of April, the date the coverage with my health plan kicks in and I called to finally get a price quote and make an appointment.

Turns out I'm not a very bright person. I thought I understood how insurances work. Evidently I don't. I guess that dental plan that was part of my health plan that was "such a better deal" is actually a discounted insurance plan, which I'm not entirely sure what that even means. Except that my crown and possible root canal are not covered and I have to pay what I would have paid a month ago through the old plan.

So I waited a month for nothing.

And I was hoping the Aetna insurance would cover putting me out for the procedure so I would just sleep through it, but I guess not. The GEHA insurance won't cover it unless it's necessary, so unless I wanna pony up another $300, it'll be local anesthesia. Which I am not happy with at all.

I hate that I wasted my own time. I hate that I didn't look into the Aetna plan more. I hate that dental coverage in general sucks. Not to mention that we have a few other rather large sums of money that have to be paid this month for various things. So it looks like a credit card will have to be used for something. And I really hate that.

So I'm extremely frustrated and annoyed right now. I hate the dentist, but I really need this tooth fixed, it's really annoying cutting up my tongue and using denture repair stuff to cover the hole so I don't get food and stuff in there. I'll be so glad when this whole ordeal is over. I'd really like to chew on my right side again.

Things That Made Me Happy This Week

OK, as you may have noticed, I've been having a bit of rough time lately. And I can't say I'm wonderful, this week was slightly brighter than last week. Though it was still a struggle. But I've decided to focus on the things that helped make my week a little brighter.
I ordered some things that were completely unnecessary. I've had this site bookmarked for probable more than 3 years, but just couldn't justify spending money on items that were so frivolous. But last week I decided that I wanted a few items to use during faire. So I ordered a coin purse to hold my money/id/pass, a small pouch to segregate my faire makeup from my real life make up, and a bag to help lug things back and forth. I love the attitude on these items and it makes me happy. They're so Dorothy. I was a little disappointed with the quality of the pouch, but it wasn't that expensive. Other than that, I'm happy with the purchase.

No sewing!! I know I still have a little to do on my dress to make it faire ready, but it was so nice to just enjoy my evenings again without feeling horrid guilt for not being chained to my sewing machine.

Peter Wingfield was on Human Target. Human Target started in January on Fox and we love the show. Though I admit part of my enjoyment comes from the fact that Mark Valley is just so damn cute. (Geek alert!) Peter Winfield used to be on Highlander (a show I adore, cheesy as it is) and I used to drool over him then. He hasn't done a whole lot since, so seeing him as the bad guy in this week’s episode just made my soul happy. He's just so dreamy. I know, I’m a nerd.

Lady Jane’s diarrhea seems to have finally stopped. My mother-in-law ordered some stuff online that sells natural pet remedies, and one of the samples was called Luxolite and that stuff literally fixed her in a day. It’s amazing. I am so incredibly happy with this product. I ordered the 16oz bottle and we give her a little every day. What I love even more is it’s not a drug, so I can continue to give it to her without it doing her any harm. She’s like a whole new cat. And I am sooooo relieved not to be cleaning cat diarrhea off my floor anymore.

My husband. He’s just so sweet and adorable. I’m one lucky gal.

His video. My mom told me about it, and it’s just too cute and funny. I’ve watched it so many times already:

Dealing

So when I was in my early 20’s my doctor started me on Paxil to deal with my depression. The idea at the time was I probably just needed it to correct a chemical brain imbalance and after about 6-9 months I wouldn’t need it any more. If I remember correctly I stayed on it for just over a year when I lost my health insurance and couldn’t afford the medication anymore. I went through HORRIBLE withdraws. But once that was over I was great. I seemed to have gone back to my “usual self” (whoever that is).


Shortly after getting married I started to feel depressed again. I had health insurance again, so after a few months I went back to the doc and got put back on an antidepressant. For the life of me I can’t remember which one. I stayed on it for about a year before deciding to stop again. My thinking at the time is 1. I was thinking it must be that damn brain chemical imbalance again and 2. We wanted to start trying to get pregnant, and I didn’t want to be on antidepressants while pregnant.

Well after the horrible withdraws, this time I wasn’t as great. I was better, but not great. And though there are definitely times since then where I feel more in control and actually happy, things have grown steadily worse. Obviously when life gets more stressed it gets worse. And I just can’t avoid stressful life moments. And seeing them through the eyes of depression just makes them so much worse.

So last week when I was sitting at my desk unable to do any work and bursting into tears because just the idea of walking to the microwave to cook my lunch seemed equivalent to laying on the ground as someone kicks me in the stomach for 5 days, I made a phone call to my doctor to start the medication again. It finally hit me. If I didn’t have to live this way, then why am I?

This was significant for a couple of reasons. One being I’ve finally come to the conclusion, after dealing with depression for 12 years, that I’m not one of the individuals that just has a chemical imbalance that can be corrected with brief treatment. This will be forever for me. And can I just say how incredible angry and sad that idea makes me? I will most likely need to take something for my depression and anxiety for the rest of my life. And where I know as far as lifetime medications go, this is by far not as bad as it could be and it’s easily workable, it just makes me sad to think that I’ll never be whole without it.

Also I’ve learned that depression is one of the symptoms of PCOS. So that’s another clue that it’s not going to go away anytime soon. Which is ironic too because the in ability to have a baby also only contributes to the depression that the PCOS is probably causing to begin with. One of the reasons I stopped the meds to begin with was to try and be “healthy” if I got pregnant. But I’ve come to realize that I owe it to myself, my husband and that mythical future child to be on the medication. If I’m this bad now, how would it be if I were pregnant or postpartum? (I’m laughing as I write this because really I feel pretty stupid writing that like I’ll ever be in that situation.)

This is all pretty funny also because I’m going to school for Psychology. I part of me feels like what good would I ever be as a therapist anyway? Who would want to go see a therapist that is broken? And what’s really funny, is that damn stigma. I HATE the stigma that’s attached to mental disorders and the lack of understanding and the fears that people have. And I’ll be one of the first to argue against anyone who says that mental disabilities should be looked at and treated differently than a physical disorder (And of course I mean socially, not medically). And yet, here I am scared of my own stigma that I know is wrong. Aren’t internal conflicts just awesome!!! But this whole thing has made me question my chosen path. I love Psychology, I really do, but maybe it’s not what I should be going into.

Overall this week I’m feeling better, but life is calmer this week than it was last week. So though I feel better I know that it really hasn’t gone away, it’s just waiting for life to get a little crazier again and then it’ll paralyze me all over again.

But that’s pretty much how I’m dealing right now. I saw the doctor on Tuesday and he prescribed Celexa. Which I'm happy with since its side effects seem minimal. It takes about 2-3 weeks for an SSRI to start being effective, so now I wait. He wants to see me in a couple of weeks and in a month to see how I'm doing. I appreciate that he's not just throwing pills at me and sending me on my way. I may seek therapy as well, but I think I need to get my mind in some kind of balance first before I can handle that. So we'll see I guess.

Weekend Recap

Ok, I promise not to do a lot of these, because I’m sure you have better things to read than what I kind of sandwich I made on Saturday for lunch and how I made Sunday’s different. But if you really care about that, let me know, I’ll give you the updates, maybe even start Twittering them. Because I don’t think enough people are saying nonsense thing on their blogs and Twitter.


Anyway, first let me start by saying HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHRIS!!! to the husband. I had originally planned to write a separate happy birthday post to him, but that didn’t happen. I’m not a very good writer so as much as I would love to write one of those lovely dedicated posts that express my love and devotion and talk about how lucky I am, it would probably just come out kinda crappy. Plus he doesn’t really read my blog, so it would have been kind of pointless. So I just gave him a naked massage instead and I’m pretty sure he was much happier with that. Stick to what you’re good at, I always say.

His birthday was last Thursday and I felt bad because he was having kind of a rough week at work and it didn’t stop just because it was his birthday. Plus we both had been fighting a cold all week and where I was able to take a sick day to try and recover, his job isn’t as plentiful with the sick days, plus since he’s 100% commission every day he’s not there, is a day he doesn’t make any money. So he was pretty mentally and physically exhausted by Friday. We both took Friday off and planned to go to Disneyland (or DLand for Leslie and Kim). We had planned to go and get annual passes for Valentine’s Day, but we just never made it out of the house, so we planned to do it on Friday for his birthday instead.

I still had a decent amount of sewing to do for approval and the kitties, knowing it was still a weekday said that we needed to be up and play, so I got up early, and they fell asleep. Damn cats. But you know if I went back to bed, they’d wake back up. So I sewed all morning. I let Chris sleep, because I knew he needed it. He finally woke up about 11:30. He was bummed I let him sleep so late, but I figured Disneyland was open until midnight, so we still had plenty of time. We got lunch and cash and finally made it there about 3pm. Chris was till bummed it was so late, but I figured since we were getting passes and could come back whenever, what did it matter. It actually ended up being a perfect time. We missed the heat of the day (which really wasn’t all that hot to begin with, but still) and we were so done by 11:30 at night. If we had come earlier we would not have been able to hang so late. The only bad thing was apparently that Friday is one of the busiest days of the year for some weird reason so the place was PACKED. But it was still fun. And now we have way overpriced passes to go back whenever. We HAVE to go at least 4 more times to make it worth it, so that’s a bit of an incentive.

Of course we ran into faire people there, which amazed me since it was so crowded, but since Danny pretty much lived there anyway, I guess it was no surprise that we ran into him. It was good to see him, since he’s not doing faire this year.

We came home and crashed out. My body reminded me that it’s not 19 anymore and doesn’t appreciate all that I did to it that afternoon.

Saturday I got up early again to try and get some more sewing done. The moms came over about 11 AM and we headed to Hollywood to go see Cats. We wanted to leave early because we heard about a protest down Hollywood Blvd that would shut it down and to give extra time for traffic. I drove and thankfully I’m familiar with the area enough that I was able to get us there and parked without even messing with the protest. Cats was awesome. I saw it once before when I was in London over ten years ago now. I was so excited to see it again. It did not disappoint. I figured there would be some traffic on the way home, but it was awful!! It took over three hours and that doesn’t count us stopping for dinner.

Then Chris’s mom stayed and hung out for a while, which I didn’t mind except I had costume approval on an unfinished dress is a little over 12 hours and I didn’t feel like I could just ignore her and sew. After she left I sewed and sewed like crazy. Around midnight I realized the tall hat wasn’t getting made in time, so when I finished the sleeves I threw together a pill box hat and will hopefully get the tall hat approved this weekend. I finally crawled into bed at 4am. But the cats were just SO HAPPY that I was up most the night they were pretty upset that I decided to go to bed. Bart figured 3 hours sleep was plenty and after some cursing, yelling and maybe a throwing of a shoe he spent the next hour in the bathroom while I tried to get some rest.

I crawled out of bed about 8:30am, all kinds of grumpy. Mix of nerves and lack of sleep. I finally headed out to faire, way behind schedule. I got a fabulous comment as I got there. Then met up with the girls to discuss the previous day’s approvals and catch up on what was going on. After making sure the costume mistress was available for approval, I went and got dressed. I don’t think I can express how nervous I was. This is the third dress I’ve made and the previous two she has just ripped to shreds. The last one I was up all night before opening day remaking the bodice and she still HATED it. So I was pretty sure she was going to at least be pretty picky about this one. Even though it was much better made, I know there are still a decent amount of little issues that I expected her to start listing and yelling at me for. I had fully intended for hber to tell me that the dress wasn't approvable and that I should just pack my shit and go home.

But she didn’t she only pointed a small fit issue with the bodice, which should be pretty simple to fix and she signed my card*!!!! I couldn’t believe it! She didn’t bring out a ruler and start measuring lines or counting jewels or even question the really bad hat, she just signed it!! I was shocked. And so relived. I can’t express the relief enough. After approval I was planning to go be a part of guild stuff for bit, but a gal who used to be a part of faire YEARS ago showed up for a visit and we ended up catching up for an hour. At that point I had to go because Chris’s grandparents wanted to take us out for Chris’s birthday. I don't have any pics yet. I'll post some as soon as I do. This is one of the times I'm bummed my camera sucks. The pics won't be very good.

So I drove home, showered, and sat down and relaxed for a minute for the first time all weekend. At the last minute Chris’s grandparents decided not to come up so it was just us and his mom. We went to Spaghetti Factory and I had some wine to celebrate the dress approval. After dinner I ran to the grocery store, and then went to bed. I was so tired.

It was a very busy and full weekend. I usually complain that a weekend at home doing nothing doesn’t feel like a real weekend because I’m not LIVING LIFE!!! But I think there is such a thing as the opposite extreme having the same effect. But no complaints. Overall it was a great weekend.

*For workshops we have a reconing card. We have several requirements that we have to complete, the workshops that I've mentioned before, guild support such as building and other activities, costume approval and our guildmasters signature before we can get pur pass for the season.

Hello Old Friend

So I really wrote this post about two weeks ago and I’ve been going back and forth on whether or not I was going to publish it ever since. Not because it isn’t exactly how I’ve been feeling (not only lately, but really for the last few months, and really when I think about it, for well over a year), but because it’s just so raw. It’s pretty embarrassing. I’ve never actually ever written out before what it’s like for me dealing with depression. It was freeing in a lot of ways but also extremely frightening. Writing it all out makes it so much more real.


But this post in a sense is how I’ve been seeing the world for a very long time now. I’ve thought about editing it a bit, because it’s kind of choppy and doesn’t really flow well. But I think that it’s a good example of how my brain is working right now, so I’m leaving it as is. This isn’t by far all I have or want to say about depression or what I’ve been feeling like, but it’s a start.

I guess it was shortly after high school when I first felt the darkness in my life. I remember just feeling so tired, so sad, so lethargic. I remember talking to the wife of my youth pastor in an attempt to try and get some support and guidance. She basically just told me that I just needed to pray more. Something I was already doing, and didn’t seem to be doing any good. This depression lasted the summer off and on. Not too heavy, but it was there. Always. After a few months it was gone.

Since then I’ve struggled with depression. Sometimes the darkness lasts longer than others. Sometimes it’s deeper; sometimes it’s so oppressive I think I’m going to drown. Others I can push it aside and everyone things I’m functioning like normal. I believe it was in my late 20’s that the anxiety decided to join the party.

Though, I don’t know if that’s true. When I think about it anxiety, most especially in social situations, is something I’ve always struggled with. I just didn’t realize it. I remember a time about 10 years ago when my usual ride for faire wasn’t available to I needed to call someone else for a ride because I still wasn’t driving yet. The lady I needed to call is someone who I knew fairly well, had offered me a ride if I ever needed one, and was never anything but kind to me. It took me an hour of hyperventilating to work up the courage to call her. And as soon as I hung up, I threw up.

And of course when I’m in the darkness the anxiety only gets worse. Sometimes I can barely drive without panicking about right turns. Yes, right turns freak the shit out of me. No, I have no idea why.

To this day I find I hardly know any of the women outside of my immediate office. Not because I don’t want to know them. But because I’m terrified to talk to them. I am absolutely freakin terrified. My stomach turns at the thought of it. Recently a few of them, probably realizing that I’m not going anywhere and always see me at the usual watering holes, have started to reach out to me and talk to me. One this usually leaves me stunned. I try to act as casual as possible, then run back to my tiny office shaking and go over every word that I said and how stupid it probably sounded.

What’s funny about this is you can ask me to get up on a stage and give a speech to 100+ people and I have no problem with that. And in other social situations I can be just fine. I’m not really sure what it is about some that just freak me out.

So, all this to say the darkness is back again. And it’s pretty heavy this time. I can’t work, because I just don’t care. I should. But I don’t. I’m exhausted from having to put a smile on my face and act like a normal human being. The guys coming to my office to talk about their retirements and adding their newborn to their health coverage don’t want to hear that I don’t have the energy to help them. My boss doesn’t want to hear that I’m too lost in my own mind to finish the files.

I feel so angry. I want to yell. I want to tell everyone to just fuck off. I want to break things. I want to cry. I want to run away from every responsibility every commitment no matter how small. I want it all gone. I feel so guilty. For my husband that really has no idea what to do with his wife that’s got some major “issues”. I feel guilty that I’m not taking care of things like I should be and that the aftermath will be a bitch the clean up. I feel guilty that I feel like I’m lying to everyone when I smile. I feel guilty that I’m a disappointment to everyone in my life who expects more from me than I can give right now. I feel sick. Nauseated. Exhausted. Cold. Hot. Drained. Anxious. I’m dizzy and shaky. Irritable and annoyed.

I know this will pass in time. But it really sucks right now. The worst part of it is. Sometimes I can’t tell which is the real me. The me in the darkness or the me out of the darkness. The darkness is comfortable. It’s familiar. It’s warm. I know my place here. I know what to expect. I know where I am. When I’m not in the darkness, I know it’s there. Always. Just off to the side. Waiting. And it’s only a matter of time before it returns. And that’s pretty terrifying.

Only At Faire

So I survived the weekend. It was fun but it totally kicked my ass. I’ll post more about it and a belated birthday post for the husband when I can comprehend a bit more. For now I’ll leave you with this gem:

Oddest. Compliment. Ever.

As I’m walking through the parking lot to faire workshops yesterday morning a “gentleman” also walking to faire makes this comment:

Him: Wow! You have a really nice gait!

Me: ???

Him: No really, your kinesiology is quite amazing! You’ve really got this bipedal thing down!

Me: Thank you?

65 Million years of evolution folks apparently ends with me being a really good biped. Probably the strangest complement I’ll ever receive, but I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.