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 |  Welcome to Whatsit's Wild World. |
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Sometimes I think we're all tightrope walkers suspended on a wire two thousand feet in the air, and so long as we never look down we're okay, but some of us lose momentum and look down for a second and are never quite the same again: we know. ~Dorothy Gilman The Tightrope Walker |
| If you have never read Where'd You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple, I cannot recommend it highly enough! The title gives away the main fact, which is that Bernadette has disappeared. Bernadette's daughter connects all her emails and other papers pertaining to the last few weeks before her disappearance. I couldn't keep my eyeballs off it! I have also been about to kill myself reading all of Pat Conroy's books. His non-fiction books are the best - it's unusual for me to say that because I usually love fiction and only occasionally read non-fic, but in his case it's different. Right now I am reading My Losing Season, which is about basketball, of all things. Once again, anything about sports is usually the last thing I would read, but this is really good. He also has one called My Reading Life which is superb. I am re-reading Gone With the Wind for about the fifth time. It never gets old. The last book about Mitford and Father Tim (or Father Time, as he accidentally gets called in this installment) came out a while back and my mother bought it. It's called Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good. Absolutely lovely! Good thing I'm a reading addict, not a shoe addict or a lipstick addict. Reading is one of the few free things left thanks to libraries! |
| 1. My husband spent the weekend painting the kitchen brick red. We live in my mother's old house and she had put this wallpaper up when she lived here. My husband decided to paint over the wallpaper rather than peel it. I couldn't blame him for not wanting to peel the wallpaper, but now you can see where the seams of the wallpaper are. Also you can see the swirly pattern in the wallpaper, which is actually kind of neat. 2. We had Bible School commencement last night. My husband and kids went to help with Bible School every night; I didn't. Every night they came home with Charlie stories. They had a small tent set up for one of the activities. Evidently one night Charlie decided to take a running jump into the tent, upon which he quite naturally got in trouble with the powers that be. A couple of hours later somebody said the word "tent" in conversation and Charlie objected: he didn't like the word "tent" anymore. The tent MADE him get in trouble, you understand. Getting to see Charlie take part in the performance was the highlight of my day. Not that he did anything unusual because he didn't, it was just entertaining to be able to see him in person. 3. This Torzadone I am taking has been making me sleep like a log. I don't know when I have had so many good nights of sleep in a row. I don't know how much better I am at dealing with stuff though. I suppose that takes time. 4. I am rereading all the Sherlock Holmes stories. When I started working at South Hills library at age 18, I discovered Sherlock Holmes and I couldn't keep my eyeballs off him until I had read every word and he is still one of my favorites. 5. My mother had finally decided to have surgery on her knee. It is scheduled for August 17. It will be me and my stepfather having to take care of her. There is nobody else. She has put this off for years. It's a wonder she can still walk on her knee; there's not much left in there. |
| I did go to my appointment yesterday. I wound up talking to a guy who is a nurse-practitioner who mostly prescribes what medication you need and only listens nominally. He said that they do have therapists that do the listening part. Now I begin to understand how all this works. The more people you have to see, the more money you have to pay. What did I expect? However, he did give me two prescriptions. One is for Trazodone, which is an anti-depressant that is also supposed to help me sleep. Wahoo! I took it last night and slept beautifully. I was told that the Trazondone may make me have super-vivid dreams: not necessarily nightmares, though. They did not appear last night, however. He said it would take a couple of weeks for it to make me feel better emotionally or mentally. I also got a prescription for Prozac, which I am supposed to wait a couple of weeks to start so if I have any side effects we will know which prescription caused it. Prozac is really kind of just-in-case. If I am satisfied with how the Trazodone by itself works I don't have to get the Prozac. I guess we will see. |
| If you want to know the truth, I am just blogging today because I had decided that in the interests of trying to have some emotional healing, I would blog 2 or 3 days a week. I think not being able to blog was part of my problem. It's been 12 days. That's a slippery slope - to me, blogging is one of the things I am holding onto that will make me better. I've had 3 or 4 not-quite-panic-attacks-for-no-reason and several days of feeling-despair-for-no-reason. There is no logic to this. That's part of the problem. If there were logic to it, I might be able to do something about it. You know, by myself, like I always have. I have tried for years to avoid handing control of my brain and emotions over to a medication, preferring to try and control it myself, but look how I'm doing with it. Right now I am ready to start swallowing some kind of medication just to avoid the roller coaster. If I ever do get to talking about how I feel, how I DON'T feel, all the things I'm mad about, my mother, or how many words I have had to swallow to get along, then I can't stop talking and I start to cry, as I did last night and which nobody wants to listen to. I feel like I am getting on everybody's nerves. The problem with taking something is that I don't want to be drugged, but I guess drugged would be better than what I have now, which I can't even put a name to. I don't even have a name for what I have. I am putting a good face on myself, which actually helps some what in the tradition of "Fake it until you make it." But so far it's all faking it and no making it. |
Well, let's see . . . My husband and I went to church last night in two different cars. On the way home, the kids and I rolled down the windows (I admit we would have done this anyway since my car doesn't have any air, but it did add to the general enjoyableness of it), blasted some of our favorite songs from my phone and sang along. Fun times. Matt went to String Camp today. No, he didn't go OFF to camp - they come home every afternoon. Later on in the summer he IS going to sleep-away camp, two in fact: church camp and soccer camp. My-husband-the-violinist took him to String Camp this morning and then picked him up at 1:30. One of hubby's violin students wanted to go but didn't want to go by herself, so Matt and hubby are there to lend moral support. Plus the mom doesn't want to deal with the notoriously bad traffic around the college where String Camp is being held, so she paid half of Matt's tuition if her daughter could go with them. Not a bad deal. We have a silly habit of giving our dogs middle names. Bitsy's middle name is Louise and Wimzy's middle name is Grace. This gives us something to call them when they get in trouble, just as we do our children. We realized we never had given Jack a middle name. Emily and I were calling out silly names such as Giovanni and Guglielmo. Emily called out Rumpelstiltskin and Jack perked up and looked at her intently. Then I said it and he turned his piercing gaze to me. Every time we have said it since then, he has looked at us quizzically. We have decided that in a former life Rumpelstiltskin must have been his name. I cooked hamburgers for supper. They were much bragged on. My mother remarried when I was fifteen and my stepfather taught me to cook. Everything he cooked was cooked extremely simply, yet delicious. I still do this. As much time as I spend cooking, simple is a good thing. Around the time hubby left to pick up the string-campers, I left as well. One thing I was doing was getting out of the house, a necessity for me sometimes in spite of mostly being a homebody. I spent the afternoon talking to somebody I have known since I was a teenager: for thirty years, in fact, and it was the first week of June that we met. I needed somebody to spill to and he has always been my go-to person for that, just as I have been for him. A friendship like that is rare, in my experience, and nice to have. |
| I went to Region 8 today. There were several receptionists, all ranging between Barbie and obese, most normal. I have no idea which one I talked to on the phone, thank goodness, because everybody I talked to today was exceedingly nice. All that happened today was that I met with an Intake Counselor. She asked me 5 questions 8000 different ways. I considered holding back on some of the answers but didn't and she wasn't in the least judgmental about anything I said. I had visions of being hauled off to one of those places people don't talk about, but evidently I am not as bad off as I thought. When asked directly, she did tell me that I wasn't crazy. You don't know what a relief that was, to hear that straight out. I know that sounds weird and I don't care. I'm absolutely weary of keeping everything shut up inside. I couldn't get another appointment until July 13, which is the downfall of this place, but after that things will move along a little more swiftly. That appt is with a doctor. Sometime between now and then a therapist is supposed to call and set up a time for us to meet. Hallelujah. They may regret the day I showed up. I am going to talk until I have nothing left inside to talk ABOUT. |
| No one thing of great moment has happened recently, so I am giving you another list: 1. I am reading The Godfather. It is marvelous. Much better than the movie, of course. Also, we watched Field of Dreams tonight, which was based on a book called Shoeless Joe. I went to see Field of Dreams at the movie theater when it came out and loved it. I didn't realize until years later that it was based on a book. The only reason I did realize it was because somebody donated the book to the library where I was working. The book is fabulous. It is pretty similar to the movie, but quite naturally they had to take a lot out of the book to make the movie, including the fact that the Kevin Costner character had a twin brother. 2. A friend of mine found out that I take Magnesium to sleep. He also found out that a secondary but very important effect of Magnesium is that it prevents leg cramps. The reason I know this is that if I run out of Magnesium and go a couple of days without taking it, I get horrible ones. My friend has horrible leg cramps for which he takes Potassium. I just got a new bottle of Magnesium, so I gave him a good many of mine. He told me today that it seems to be working: no leg cramps so far. This made me feel good! 3. My new puppy, Jack, came in through the dog door with a flower pot full of dirt and, right in front of everybody in the living room, slung the pot, and therefore the dirt, all over creation. Good grief. 4. The color guard for the band at the local high school had a pancake breakfast this morning to raise money. We know a couple of people whose children are on the color guard. There weren't that many people there. I was glad we went. 5. I went to the grocery store today. I wanted some Altoids, which is a brand of peppermints that I love. I have them in my purse and all over the house wherever I sit. If I could place boxes at church and at my mother's house where I sit, it would be great. I am an Altoid ADDICT, you understand. |
1. Memorial Day was yesterday. It went well. My mother and stepfather grilled hamburgers and we ate with them. We played Yahtzee afterward. A good time was had by all, as far as I know. If not, there was some good pretending going on.  2. The last day of school was Friday May 22. The last day of school for teachers, my husband included, is this Friday, the 29th. They had some bad weather days to make up. The students didn't have to make them up but the teachers do. 3. We have had terrible weather. Sunday night I didn't go to church because I didn't feel good, but when everybody else got home Matt discovered he had left his phone on a picnic table outside, so I volunteered to drive him back down there to keep hubby from having a fit. Luckily the picnic table is under a roof because the rain got so heavy I thought we were going to float off, plus it was thundering and lightening. I hate driving in weather like that, but it kept the peace so it's all good. It rained yesterday as well, but no lightening. We needed the rain, but the person in charge of the weather went overboard.  4. We went to a wedding Saturday. One of my husband's old students, Jordan, got married. Jordan was three when my husband taught him. I am officially old. 5. My old Honda CRV doesn't want to start. It WILL start, but it's extreeeeemely hard to turn the key. Well, it's 13 years old, so it is getting rather elderly. |
| I called Region 8, this place that will supposedly help you if you don't have insurance. The lady answered the phone and I told her that I had been depressed and didn't have a job or insurance and that a friend of mine had told me they might be able to help. There was this long pause. My spirits, up at the thought of actually being able to get help, immediately dipped. Then when the lady finally decided to actually talk to me, she said "Let me get your name, sweetie" in her I-am-talking-to-a-child voice. Well, I went ahead and made the appointment because I certainly do want to change my situation, but I don't see why people who are without a job or health insurance have to be deprived of their dignity. I can't wait to see this woman. I most sincerely hope she is morbidly obese with a double chin, but with my luck she will look like Barbie. My appointment isn't until June 1 at 9:30 in the morning. Regardless of how Round 1 with these people went, I am determined to wring some help from them. So there. |
| Mandy and Ethan got married. The wedding was just precious. Mandy looks just like her mom. Unfortunately, her dad has a mullet, but he was otherwise nice-looking. She had three bridesmaids. The maid of honor was her sister, Randy. Yeeessss, their names are Mandy and Randy. Their names are the only things alike about them, otherwise they are totally dissimilar. The bridesmaids were all beautiful and the groomsmen and ushers were nice-looking. One grinned every time he escorted a girl down the aisle, but that was to be expected, I suppose. They had their reception at Lake Lester. Now, I think I blogged about the last outside reception I attended two or three years ago, at which it threatened rain. At least at that one there was a great big building to run to in case actual drops fell. In this case there was one tiny cabin. We would have been squashed in there like sardines. However, the drops never fell and the cloud cover and breeze kept it from being too hot. The reception was not one I would have picked but it was still cute. It was quite rustic. They had hay bales to sit on. I started out on a bench but the hay bales proved to be more comfortable. The food didn't go with the setting: it was nice enough to have been in the White House, except for the canned drinks iced down in the rowboat. The bride and groom had their first dance among the pine trees in their formal clothes. It was quite nice!Whew. I'm glad to be home though. |
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Well, it is the time of miracles I guess.