hand eye crafts

Wow --- a week later.  There was a time when I could/would post every other day.  Are blogs going out of style?  Is it tumblr or nothing these days? Not that I've had any earth-shattering news to report.  When you are clinically depressed and chronically unemployed, days pretty much run together as blurs of nothing getting done. We did buy our Christmas tree.  A beautiful, big, fat one.  But I haven't drug myself up the stairs to pull the decorations out of Hannah's closet.  Must get the lights on it tomorrow, though.  Simply must .

Yes, yesterday was Thanksgiving.  We were invited to dinner with dear friends, and had excellent food and unsurpassed company. At one point, someone mentioned the date.  November 22nd.  And we launched into a discussion about how ours (the hosts' and mine) is the last generation that will have that twist-in-the-gut feeling whenever we see or hear that date.  It has always been a date that made me stop and remember the messages I got about that day growing up, and wondering (once I was old enough) what the world might be if that had simply passed as another day. Every year that I taught, if the 22nd were a class day, I would ask my students if they knew why it was an important date.  The more years I taught, the fewer hands would go up, and the more quizzical the looks I got.  It would make me sad --- how could they not know?  But do I know, was I told about things that happened 25 - 30 years before I was born?  Not necessarily.  Stil...

It is 11:57 PM, I have taken SEVEN Klonopin, and sleep is not in sight.  That is double the dose I am supposed to take.  I'd take more, but that seems a little dangerous, and I am so awake now, I doubt it would help. I am angry, and I am in pain, and I want to lash out at people in my anger, and I want them to hurt like I hurt.  Because they don't seem to care right now.  My son and I had a SCREAMING telephone call this afternoon, and I'm willing to bet when it was over, he went back to playing video games or whatever he was doing and never gave it a second thought. My daughter spent all day in her room, until friends came to take her our for pizza.  We've said maybe 8 words all day.  I've got plenty of things I could yell at her. Why am I so angry?  Where is this consuming rage coming from?  I just want to smack everybody down.  I'm being cruel to our pets, I'm throwing things --- I don't have any control. I lost my mind onc...

I've developed some sort of "syndrome" or "itis" in the biceps of each of my arms --- especially the right.  Knitting for more than about 90 seconds brings on sharp, not-quite-unendurable pain.  I had a massage last Thursday, and the masseur said he could work it all out in about 6 months, but that a physical therapist could probably take care of it in 8 weeks.  So, I've got a phone call to make tomorrow.

Yesterday was the first year anniversary of my mother's death.  I was the only one who remembered.  Which would have mortified her.  She was one of those write-the-thank-you-notes-the-evening-of-the-event-type.  She never wanted to look anything but completely together, with everything handled. She was determined to be perfect, to stay on top of things because of pride.  She wanted to stand alone because of what she was capable of.  Her isolation was due to her idea that dignity was the goal, and dignity is usually a one-person-at-a-time event. I find myself doing almost everything by myself.  Remembering dates, occasions.  My children don't have a clue.  Don't even show an interest in paying attention to anyone's lives/feelings/activities but their own.  I'm the only one who seems to realize that there are things that simply have  to be done, just have  to be thought about.  Even if it interrupts a DVD or a text ...

For some reason, both our dogs have been whining all day long.   It has driven me insane.  Rupert, in particular, has been persistent with his shrill yodel.  I have no idea what the problem/issue is, I just know I have a column of agony in the right side of my brain drilled from the top of my head down to my top teeth. My psychiatrist refused altering my medications, though I begged  him to.  He said, firstly, I am taking so many things, trying to pinpoint exactly what to change and how much would be almost impossible to do.  I can understand that, but I NEED HELP.  His answer was that since depression is such an isolating disease, I need to get out and with other people as much as possible.  I told him that I volunteer once a week, and have my knitting group every other week.  Nice "start," he said.  Add one more activity before the year is over was what he sent he me away with. I could have punched him in the throat.  I a...

It is just after 1 AM, and here I sit, unable to sleep.  I've taken 6 Klonopin and 4 sleep aid tablets, and I'm as wide awake as I can be. Which stinks because I have to be at my psychiatrist's in the morning.  For him to say, for the jillionth time, "Well, let's just stay with what we're doing, and let me see you in about 3 weeks."  I have begged him to try something else.  I have brought all my medications into his office, poured them on the floor and said, "These aren't working.  DO SOMETHING ELSE." I realize that as many drugs as I take, it's a delicate process of figuring out which are effective and which are not, and then calculating how much more or less or each to take.  But nothing, nothing, nothing is working right now, and I have to make him understand that.  Surely telling him I'm now going to therapy twice a week because I couldn't make it with just one session will make some sort of difference.

As of this exact moment: 7:37 PM on the 9th of November, 2012, I care about absolutely nothing. I have kept myself drugged since Wednesday so that I could sleep.  I took my daughter to work, I went to my second therapy session, but then I slept.  In the last 72 hours, I've seen my daughter for approximately 6 minutes. I don't care.  I don't want to care.  What has caring done for me these last 2 years?  News from Tennessee is that we may be close to signing the sale papers on the house.  So?  Just another trip up there, just more guilt, just more pain.  It will all be over, but it will never end. One week ago today, my mother died.  The first year is hard, because you're forever being reminded of where you had been, or what you had seen, or what you had said or laughed about during that last year. Will the passing of the anniversary make a difference in me?  I don't know.  I don't remember any big changes the year after...

While my fears that the nations was going to be passed into cold, profit-seeking, non-caring hands have been allayed, I realize that some people are horrified at Tuesday's outcome.  I am sorry there are such bitter, inflammatory differences in this country.  We should always have, maybe even make, room for disagreement.  But more and more, it seems that what were once parlor discussions, or real debates are becoming terrorist, murderous plots against those who may only disagree with us on whether a school tax should be raised 3 cents. Politics have always mattered.  I've been so proud of my children (one of whom was voting for the first time) this year, paying attention, asking questions, offering well-considered opinions (even if I heartily disagreed with them.)  Politics is the place for putting all the ideas out on the table and seeing what we can come up with that suits us all. Mine, I guess, is the generation that began to doubt politics and politi...

For as long as I've had a political sense (and that's a long time;  my father was quite political), there have been years where I really wanted the candidate I backed to win, but felt that waking up the next day would not feel all that different if (s)he didn't. Tonight, I am scared.  I am scared about what will happen to this country domestically and internationally if Mitt Romney is elected.  I am honestly fearful for what he would do in and to this nation that my children will be reaching adulthood in. I don't know what else I could have done here as far as re-electing President Obama, but I am so very terribly nervous that all of us who back him might have missed something, and will be paying (in almost countless ways) for it.

My last week has been spent in a knot of fury.  I'm mad because this is not how my life is supposed to be.  I'm mad that I can't seem to do anything about it.  I'm mad that other people in my same situation are moving forward, and I'm still stuck here in Unemploymentland I'm mad that I'm mad.  I'm mad that my depression continues to deepen.  I'm mad that I can only meet with my therapist once a week, and then I almost literally crawl through the next 6 days until I can see her again.  I'm mad that settling my mother's estate is taking so long.  I'm mad thinking about what I did wrong in trying to get it settled.  I'm mad that I didn't bring more things back from the house.  I'm mad because I know she's mad that I didn't do better. I'm mad that I can't sleep all the time, because that is the only reprieve I have.  I'm mad that my children both seem to be having a hard time grasping the concept of ...