Bumps in the road

I swear I never set out to make this my online catalog of complaints ... But. I do need to record that I'm sort of taking a nosedive right now. So much so that my therapist is insisting I get back on meds, at least for awhile. Which I am going to do starting this week.

Depression sucks. I still have such a hard time accepting it as an illness that is not my fault; symptoms like hopelessness, feelings of worthlessness and guilt, anxiety, complete and total physical and mental exhaustion all feel like things I should be able to "get over" with positive thinking, exercise and a healthy diet. The fact that I can't only makes me feel like more of a loser.

So I hope the medication helps.

Other than this one big black spot on my heart, things are going OK. The house and garden are looking good, the dogs are awesome, I'm exercising every day and getting out with friends and eating mostly pretty well. Bea went in for her spay surgery this morning, which I've been having very mixed feelings about. Not that I want her to have puppies, because I definitely don't. It's just that she's my little girl, and this is major surgery, and I've never had a girl dog before and I really hate the thought of anyone cutting into her poor sweet little puppy belly for any reason. I dropped her off this morning and cried all the way home.

I also stopped by my old house, which happens to be just across the street and down a bit from my vet's office. The property has been on the market for at least seven or eight years and it finally sold, so right now it's sitting empty and as luck would have it the doors were open so I let myself in and spent a half hour or so walking through and remembering how much I loved the place when I lived there. I was lonely there a lot of the time, but it was such a sweet little house, all French doors and windows and a little stone fireplace, with flowers and vines and roses everywhere and beautiful trees all around. It's been sadly neglected, and painted some pretty god-awful colors, but the plum tree I planted ten years ago is doing great and so is the lemon verbena, and the fencing I built when Tater was born is holding up well too. I don't know who bought it but I'm guessing the whole place will probably be bulldozed before too long, since nobody who could afford to buy it would ever consent to live in it, and it's too far gone now to offer as a rental. So that was kind of sad too, though I'm glad I got a chance to see it one last time, empty, instead of full of ugly crap "antiques" for sale like the last time I stopped by. It will always stay in my memory as one of my favorite houses I've ever had.

It feels weird to be here with just Tater and me. Bea is staying at the vet clinic overnight. It's a foggy, cold morning; the fog never did really burn off yesterday and maybe it won't today either. I really should get out and go for a long walk, try to metabolize some of these stress chemicals ... or maybe I'll just go back to bed for awhile and walk later.

Sick-o-meter

You know those days when you think you might be about to come down with something, but you can't quite tell? You feel sort of tired, but maybe that was just because you stayed up too late the night before. Or maybe had a little too much cheese – that could be why your head feels a little stuffy. Should you stay home from work and try to nip it in the bud? Or is there really anything the matter at all?

If you're diabetic, there's an easy way to answer this question. Test. I've found that if I'm starting to get sick, my blood glucose first thing in the morning (FBG, or fasting blood glucose – typically the lowest number of the day for me) will be as much as 30 points higher than usual. That's how I knew on Monday that I really was starting a cold, and was able to call in sick with a clear conscience.

When I was growing up we did not stay home from school unless we were practically on death's door, and I've always retained the fear of being seen as a faker if I claim to be too sick to go to work. It's weirdly gratifying to be able to "prove" that I really am fighting an infection. And taking the day off to sleep and drink tea and sleep some more made all the difference. Yesterday and today I forced myself to stay in bed all morning as well, since I don't have to work until the afternoon, and that has helped a lot too. A cold of the type that usually takes about a week to work its way out of my system is already about finished, and today I feel well enough to ride my bike to work (the sun is out, it's only three miles, and I may call Mr. A for a ride home depending on how I feel by the end of the day).

In other news, we finally replaced the faulty big front burner on the stove, and I keep burning things on it. I had gotten used to the old one, which took forever to heat up and never really did get as hot as it was supposed to. Someday I would love to replace the whole stove with one that runs on propane – which is the next best thing to gas, if you live someplace where gas is not available, like we do. I hate, hate cooking on an electric stove. This one is not original to the house but it's from the same era, and the main thing I do like about it is its color – dark avocado green. I don't think they make them that color anymore, unfortunately.

The first house I lived in out here was way out in the mountains and it didn't have a furnace or gas lines – the heat was a big wood stove, and we cooked on propane. I loved it. This house does have baseboard heaters, which smell and are inefficient ... so I've been loving the wood stove we installed at the end of the summer. Chopping and hauling wood is not as romantic as some people might try to describe it, but it is kind of a satisfying routine and wood heat is just the best. I don't know why 70 degrees of electric heat should feel different from 70 degrees of wood heat, but it does – maybe it's the humidity? With wood, the heat seems to penetrate my body more. It radiates off everything – the fireplace bricks, the furniture, the walls, everything.

The one thing I had forgotten about is the dust. Heating solely with wood produces a lot of ash that invisibly filters into the air every time you open the stove. Dusting is one of my least favorite household chores, and I'm finding I have to do it a lot more often now than I did before – twice a day right around the stove, and at least once a day in the rest of the room. I'm wondering if there might be some kind of air filter that could help keep the air a little cleaner; must look into that.

Wonton soup

Still languishing under the iron fist of this mysterious affliction of the lungs ... I'm over the worst of it but my chest still crackles and rattles away every time I exhale (keeping me awake all night despite earplugs, since the noise is coming from inside my own body) and I just generally have very little energy to do anything but sit at my desk, staring at the screen through thick mental fog and slugging down herb capsules with copious amounts of hot herb tea.

I haven't felt like eating anything for more than a week now. But you have to eat something, even when you're sick, and what I've been eating when I have to eat is soup. Wonton soup. I've decided it's the most perfect food in the universe for me right now – days upon days upon days of nothing but wonton soup, and I'm still not tired of it. I had a big bowl of it an hour and a half ago, and am already looking forward to having it again for dinner.

This particular soup comes from a little Chinese place near my office, and is served in all its green and golden glory in a big yellow, orange, pink and white striped ceramic bowl with turquoise dots around the rim. She (there's only one of her) brings it out on a plate – the plates are usually plastic with various Chinese flowery designs, but the other day it was heavy white restaurant porcelain with a pattern of dark green egg-shaped things around the border – and gives you one of those flat-bottomed spoons to scoop it up with. She sets it before you ... and the steam rises from the clearest of all possible lovely clear broths ... and there are the puffy little delicious wontons paddling around on their backs, daring you to kiss their adorable soft white bellies as they float amongst slivers of green onion and big crunchy pieces of bok choy ... and you dip the spoon in and lift it to your lips ... and the yummy delicious warmth and flavors fill your mouth with happiness ... and you feel it (the happiness) move down your throat and into your stomach and all throughout your entire weak and exhausted body ... and suddenly, you feel as if you can live again.

Yes, this soup has restored my will to live. More than once.

Last night as I was falling asleep I found myself dreaming, "Only 15 more hours until I can have some more of that soup again."

Did you know that "wonton" can be translated as "swallowing clouds"? It's true. If that lovely image doesn't make you want to order up a nice big bowl of beautiful delicious wonton soup, I don't know what will.

Also over the weekend, I got out my box of jewelry-making stuff and made a pretty little wrist mala out of 21 rudraksha beads knotted on red silk with an antique melon-shaped citrine bead as the stupa and a hand-tied silk tassle. I'm very happy with the way it turned out – everything about it. It's the first thing I've made in a really long time that I've been this satisfied with. The process of stringing beads and tying the silk between beads is a nice little meditation, too.

I was reflecting the other day about how my mind seems to have changed since I changed my daily work from writing to design. Part of me still feels jealous when I see the list of stories other people have been assigned to write, and I know I could go back to writing if I wanted to ... but overall, I have to say I kind of prefer the wordlessness of working with colors, shapes and images. It's still work, of course, and sometimes the production aspects of it get boring, but the work itself – creating a visual space that communicates effectively and is pleasant to look at – is fun. And it seems to be moving my mind away from the linear, text-based space I lived in as a writer, where I was obsessed with analyzing words, thoughts, ideas, constantly trying to precisely describe and explain everything ... and into a more intuitive kind of life, where meaning and emotion can be simply experienced, rather than having to be "said." I don't think it's a coincidence that my artistic life is slowly re-awakening now that I'm putting myself in a more visual, emotional kind of environment every day. It feels good to feel that happening.

Sledgehammer to the chest

That's what I got hit with on Saturday, or at least it kind of feels like it. I've been laid out for five days with the worst respiratory infection I've had in years. It started in my lungs; I could feel it on Friday. By Saturday afternoon I was reduced to sitting on the couch with a blanket on my lap, and on Sunday I spent the entire day in bed, coughing up big globs of gunk and sleeping. I dreamed I was knitting in binary code – little 1's and 0's lined up along each needle where the stitches would usually be – and instead of knitted fabric, magazine pages were coming off the needles. I tossed them into a pile where they were transformed into odd-shaped sections of sleeves and plackets ... very unsettling.

On New Year's Day I decided to venture out with Mr. A for a short trip to the store (this is about the time he started coughing, too). Normally I would describe this trip in more detail, but given my weakened condition I'll just briefly summarize by saying that we caught a lost dog we saw wandering on a busy road and got him back to his people, which seemed to me a rather auspicious way to begin a new year.

Yesterday I was finally feeling energetic enough to sit up on the couch and indulge in a full-blown temper tantrum. I couldn't help myself – I had felt so shitty for such a long time, it seemed, and I was so bored of lying around like a dead thing. I had tried some very gentle stretching, hoping to bring myself somewhat back to life, but it only caused another fit of coughing. Then later, I thought maybe a little walk down the road would feel good, which it did, but when I came back into the overheated house again I felt like I was going to choke on my own lungs.

I don't remember what finally set me off, but once I got started I just gave in to it. I cried and wailed and blubbered away like a colicky infant, totally unreasonable and in pain, knowing that crying would only make my headache and congestion worse (which it did) but having no will to stop myself until I was all cried out.

It only lasted a couple of minutes, and I think it was just what I needed. Afterwards, I was still just as sick as before, but I felt better. Calmer. I love that clear, empty feeling that comes over you when you've exhausted yourself of all emotion and can finally just sit, still and peaceful – a perfect blank – and breathe.

Today is Wednesday, and I'm still trying to decide whether I ought to go to work for a few hours this afternoon. I've been bored out of my mind for days, and would love to get out of the house and do something useful. My lungs are still crackling and full of gunk, but my fever is down and I feel stronger. According to the world wide web, I am probably past the point where I'm most contagious – a crucial point, because I really don't want to start passing this thing around at work. If someone else had had the sense to stay home when they got it, I wouldn't have had to spend the last five days as a miserable, moaning and/or howling invalid.

Watching my mind through this ordeal has been interesting. Even when I know there's nothing I can do to get better faster, some part of me always wants to fight – I think that was what I came up against when I had my meltdown yesterday. Just that rage of being in pain and unable to get out of it. Turning my logical mind off, and letting the anger express itself, instantly took the edge off not only my emotional desperation but the physical pain, too. I don't think I've ever experienced that link so clearly before, and now that I've seen it I want to start paying more attention to it in other areas of my life.

Maybe this will be the year I finally start letting myself get mad.