Things I used to do:
read
write
blog (not the same as writing)
make stuff
play with my kids
take pictures
have a clean house
cook real food
eat (instead of smoke) to regulate my blood sugar and moods
exercise

Apparently, someone gave diet pills to my ego while I wasn’t looking because now I:
let myself be intimidated
wait
scream silently for someone to rescue me

Things I plan to do starting immediately:
all of the first list above and
plant more flowers
stand up for myself
hit publish/quit self censoring

That ought to be a good start, don’t you think?

And if anybody ever tells you depression won’t kill you, they lie. Sorta. It really only eats your soul out of you and leaves a husk.

The sound of my own silence deafens me and all I hear is the roar of the vacuum my voice used to fill.

First off, let me offer an apology. I missed out SPS last Sunday for the first time in over 2 years of doing it. I left for Anson County around 7am and returned around 10:30 pm. It was a joyous day and I was so caught up in it that I forgot to snap and send a picture for you all. I have a good memory, but it’s not like computer memory: it doesn’t remember everything I enter. Moving on.

Today has been an exceedingly large day. I spent quite a bit of it catching up with Ang. I’ve been working 7 days a week lately and I have missed her. Yes, I said seven. I tried to get away with claiming only six on Sunday, and That One looked at me with one eyebrow raised, and I had to admit that he was right: it’s really been seven. Sigh. So.

I spent my day off at home today, being off. And then I got a phone call that pretty much gave me Sundays off for a least a while. At first I was quite bent, but I’ve since decided that it may be a good thing. Ain’t nothing catching God by surprise, and if there is one thing I have felt convicted about lately it is that I *never* take time to sit and be still with Him. Never. Cause I am always busy. Busy means “don’t have to deal”. You do see how handy that could be for someone in a major depression, right? Someone coping with great personal upheaval? Yes. Speaking of which.

Apparently retreating into my room and away from my family in order to be depressed alone isn’t working real well for them. Apparently, the time has now come to be real in front of them. Mary Poppins has bad days. Weeks. Years. Also.

I kicked the corner of the bathroom cabinet door right between the tendons on the front of my ankle. Oh my word, the pain. Cuss cuss.

Yep. someone touched the lens, but this was the best of the lot. I really need to look at the instruction book and figure this camera out!

This has been an interesting week. And I don’t necessarily mean that in a good way. I’ve been watching a couple of my friends struggle with issues for which I have no answers. The one I truly have no advice for, and the other just wants time and space to settle things within themselves. It’s hard for me to just stand by and wait, I want to *do something*, because I do not like seeing those I care about hurt.

I did do some other things, though. My answer to big stress is hard work, so I mowed my yard and pulled out the matted grass tufts and planted flowers Friday night. The stargazer lilies we planted last week are blooming now. Aren’t they lovely?

I guess it’s time to go mow the backyard now, cause you know what today brought, right? Yep, more stress. Nothing like coming to see your ex walking out of your bedroom. Whattheheck, yk? And then there’s that other situation, the one that requires the waiting I hate. Yep, definitely time for yard work.

That’s what my MP3 player told me last night. See, I finally tried to transfer all those nifty new downloads to it, and so I just selected them all and tried to pull them over. Un-uh. No way. I had to ick and choose, but in the end, I did manage to get most of them on it. Might be time for me to invest in one of those memory stick players. I like the small size, but it’s gonna have to be bigger than 2GB, which I guess is not so much after all, but it sure seemed like a gracious plenty when I bought the thing.

Gracious plenty. My Grandmother used to say that. I miss her.

In other news, I slept for crap last night and I’m really tired. It’s a great thing to be so close to people that you pick up their emotions. Really, it is. But it’s better when they are having a good day. Or at least when not all of them are having a bad day. Night. Whatever.

And also, if I am worried about you and you even mention you may call me back after you deal with the current bitter business on your plate??????? Please know that I will be on alert all night until I hear from you and that the kindest possible thing you could do for me would be to call no matter how late the hour. Because then I could actually go to sleep. Just sayin’.

Even if in the past “I’ll be waiting here” has meant “I’ll find some way to screw you over.” That wasn’t me.

So lately, having had a blast from my own past, I’ve been doing a little time travel. For some reason known only to trained psychologists, hanging out with That One (which is the suckiest blog name ever, but I haven’t thought of a good one yet) has caused me to remember some stuff. Not surprising to anyone that knows me, it is the music of my life that I am remembering first. I quit listening to music for most of the past two decades, because the music I liked wasn’t liked by anyone but me. I didn’t realize how much I missed it until the past couple of weeks, which I have spent building a play list on Limewire. Now the list isn’t all inclusive, it has no Air Supply or Barry Manilow, but the songs on it are ones that I truly enjoy.

It also has new to me songs on it, by folks like Bobby Blue Bland. And oldies by Roy Orbison. And contemporary Christian stuff. And He Stopped Loving Her Today, which is the song I hate to love. I cry every time I sing it, and I sing it every time I hear it, and I cry every time I sing it. I tried to copy and paste a few of the titles, but that didn’t work so well, and I am not about to type them all out. That sucks, but not as bad as Mesothelioma cancer.

Ok, time to wrap this up and get ready for work. Which is too bad, cause I do have a lot more to say, LOL!

Hmm, I don’t even have a title for this post. Mostly because I have no idea what I am going to say. There, I thought of a title. It will work, I suppose.

You know, one of my favorite things to say to my angsty friends is “take your happy where you find it”. I say that the Guitar Guy quite a bit and I also say it to Micheal and Jane. The thing is, we aren’t promised happiness at all. Joy, yes, happiness, no. Now, I believe that Christ came to give us life, and life more abundantly, but happiness, it is the gravy. Or the butter if you happen to be That One who dislikes gravy. How can anyone not like gravy? Seriously, the mind boggles. How am I supposed to serve the weiner schnitzel and he will not partake of the delectable sauce? Oops, got side tracked. The point I was making is that I am happy. And there is a peace in my life. There is so much more I want to say here, but that is as much as I can get out for now. The rest of the words are bottle necked in my mental throat, and only images are coming through.

Do you do that? Get so …full of thoughts and ideas that you aren’t using words to think anymore, but only images? And not like a slideshow, where one goes smoothly into another, but more like those little cartoon flip books, the ones where you use your thumb to control the flip rate, and the little pictures seem to move. That’s how I think sometimes, only the images aren’t necessarily connected to one another but are separate. And eventually, it resolves until only one image and one word remain. They go together, and then it is done and I can type again. Sometimes I can go back and replay the show and share with you what is on my heart and mind and sometimes I cannot and sometimes I choose not to do so.

Once upon a time, there was a girl…….. she didn’t take ephedra diet pills, but her mind still raced. And she chose not to finish the story today.