Thank you, mom. Thank you for picking me. Thank you for adopting me. Thank you for choosing to be my mom. Thank you for taking me in when no one else wanted me. Thank you for putting up with me. Thank you for guiding me. Thank you for supporting me. Thank you for comforting me in the bad times. Thank you for congratulating me in the good times. Thank you.
Thank you for soft boiled eggs on toast with tea when I am sick. Thank you for sushi dinners when I am sad. Thank you for bouillabaisse recipes and cheesecake recipes. Thank you for dinosaur pop up books and bags of yarn.
Thank you for being the port in my storms. Thank you for loving my dogs. Thank you for teaching me how to throw a dinner party with good chine, good conversation and good food. Thank you for being an example to me.
Thank you, mom, for being my mom. More importantly, thank you for CHOOSING to be my mom.
I love you.
(but I’m still picking your nursing home so straighten up!)

not that little blue pill
I, not unlike every other whiny blogger on the planet, have a propensity towards depression. Usually it’s not terrible, just your standard emo moments, some sadness, some anxiety, some love of the jack daniels. Other times it’s a scary inferno of fear, anger, deep disinterest and sheer exhaustion. It’s not something I write about on here often as it’s not something I really talk about to anyone.
It is also one of the myriad factors that led to the break up with my girlfriend 2 years ago. Not the only reason, but definitely in the top ten.
I have good months and bad months and I have a definite down turn in the winter though I am completely loathe to admit that because Seasonal Affective Disorder just seems so…psychosomatic and emo. The acronym doesn’t help matters much.
During one of my internal struggles, my good friend Alan made a comment that stuck with me, “if you had diabetes you’d treat it, diabetes is a chemical imbalance just like depression” or something to that effect. He was not referring to me, we were discussing other things.
So fine. I sucked it up, got a new doctor (it occured to me that my doctor was a major cause of anxiety for me and that I had no reason to not just go get a new one!) and went to discuss my problems. We tried celexa with disastrous results. I was moody, edgy, more anxiety ridden than usual, completely unable to concentrate or motivate myself. I gave it time, but over time things just got worse.
So we switched to zoloft, the cute little blue pill with the cute little ad campaign. It seemed to be working really well for a while. I felt good, things made sense, I was more calm in crises. Now it seems it’s not working as well. I’m back to being unmotivated, I’m tired all the time and it takes considerable effort to not punch my coworkers in the face on a regular basis. I don’t normally want to punch them so I guess if we were making a rating on a scale, I might actually be worse off than before, at least in the “urge to skull punch” category.
It’s also messing with my sleep. I suffer from insomnia anyway, but now it’s a weird new version of insomnia. I have these crazy vivid dreams that wake me up and keep my brain working so hard I feel like I’ve gotten no rest at all. The sad thing is, I really like the dreams, they’re so incredibly vivid and interesting, but also they seem to get filed into my regular memory so I find myself wondering where the mango tree was that I was frantically picking fruit from or whether I had actually bought a giant yellow sedum plant for the front yard.
When I was a teen I was on a number of different anti-depressants. My gp at the time was an overworked doctor with too many patients who didn’t really spend a lot of time dealing with me. We tried all kinds of pills in all kinds of doses, moving things up and down and around. It was a really terrible time for me and to say I was hesitant to find myself in the same place again after 14 years would be an understatement.
It was determined that I didn’t do well on SSRI’s, but everyone loves them, they always get prescribed.
Now my zoloft isn’t working.
I have a pre-op appointment with my doctor on friday and maybe we switch drugs again? maybe the best time to start a new drug is while doped up on painkillers.
It’s strange and naked and unnerving to me to make this sort of public display of my head. There’s so much that I don’t say. Somehow it just seemed important to say it.

Today was one of those days. ONE OF THOSE DAYS. You’ll note in my previous comments my mother mentioning that she’s coming down to visit. I read that and totally went into panic mode! Shit. I have so much to do this weekend and the house is a mess and of course I totally fucking spaced that my mom is coming down this weekend! How could I forget that? Well, easily, actually since I forget everything lately. After I read it I remembered some vague distant conversation with my mom about her visiting.
I am totally feeling like a retard for forgetting. I suck and I always forget stuff like this.
I email her to let her know that I had forgotten but that it’s cool, we’ll work everything out. I’m planning meals and excursions around our schedule.
She replies telling me that it was just a joke.
And a good joke it was! This was actually pretty damned funny, it played right into my neuroses.
Unfortunately, things went down hill from there.
The short version is that a notoriously unhealthy coworker shit irony all over herself as she pointed out that my lunch choice was unhealthy, paypal fucked up a payment and pulled $100 out of my personal checking account instead of my corporate credit card, a jackass coworker would not get out of my office, I screamed at another coworker so loudly that it pretty much reverberated through the front of the building (no lie) and I was out of cigarettes.
And poor poor anna had to witness it all. It’s not often I lose it at work. Time to crank up the happy juice.
But then I had to take Maddie to the vet because it looks like badgers chewed on her feet. 31 days of antibiotics, 2 weeks of daily foot soaks and a steroid shot. She was pretty good natured about it and the vet was really good. I have to remember to only see this one vet, she’s the best and she loves my dogs.
AND in a move of sheer stupidity I’ve been crocheting like a mad woman. I think something in my brain clicked and I know that I won’t be able to crochet for a long time and I can’t deal with that. It makes my hand ache but I don;t care I just sit there pumping out stitches. Right now I am working on a super cute purse pattern that I hope turns out well so I have something to show for this.
Also, I figured out my christmas present goal for all the little kids I know! If it works out it will be the cutest thing ever (and not dinosaur related!).
Love you
Heather
Associate vice president of cool

On the way into work a bitty little mobile kept drifting into my lane on Park ave. Look, I appreciate how fuel efficient and cute your car is, I really do, but if you don’t signal your intention to be in the center lane, how am I supposed to know you want to be there? How do I know you aren’t drunk or dead? And finally, i do not drive a small, fuel efficient car. I drive a rather heavy, mid-sized old lady car. Don’t drift in front of me without warning, there’s very little between you and your back bumper.
Today I sat at my desk and watched a crow attack something that seemed to be fighting back. I went to investigate thinking it was a baby bird. Sadly, it was a little injured bat. I don’t fault the crow for wanting to eat the bat and I didn’t want to chase him away, I just wish I had the balls to kill the bat to end his suffering. I suck.
2 weeks until my surgery. Don’t feel shy about asking me for my address if you want to send flowers OR, if you are shy about asking, you can use my amazon wishlist to send me things!
Or not, you can just send a card. or an e-card!
My Duplex neighbor moved out this weekend and you know what that means? Wild, raucous monkey-sex in the common areas! BOOYAH! Of course the common areas consist of the entrance foyer and the back stairs to the basement, neither of which are hot or aphrodisiacal in the least.
And, finally, I am learning how to crochet dolls. I have the deconstructed instructions, how to make different sized and shaped heads, limbs and bodies and put them all together. After the surgery and recovery i will be making dolls. And cheese.
PS!!! how could I forget! I totally gave in and got a ringtone that sounds like something. When my phone rings, it plays the A-team theme song. It’s way way way hot. It’s a thrill sort of like hearing the Rocky theme song or Eye of the Tiger, but dorkier. My favorite A-Team episode was the one where Culture Club played the hick trucker bar and everyone loved them!