Made in Richmond

…that one day I will be able to use the restroom without *someone* standing outside the door, commenting on how I take a “weally, weally long tiiiiiime.”

I’ve spent the last 10(ish) days battling a sore-throat-sinus-attack-chest-cold-thing. I haven’t really been resting; I’ve mostly been walking around moaning and coughing up…things that are gross. I finally went to the doctor on Monday and was put on one of them fancy Z-pack things and ordered to load up on Mucinex. Oh and to actually take a nap.

Since I’ve been doing that, I haven’t really had it in me to put together a coherent post about anything, so here are some bullets from my mind. YOU MIGHT CALL THEM MIND BULLETS.

• Ross and I are about to finish season 6 of The West Wing. I’ve decided that Toby Ziegler is my spirit animal.
• JR has taken to insisting that we call him “JR Spider-man.” He also calls me “Mama Spider-man.” When he’s not calling me that, he’s calling me “Little Mama”.
• (I don’t know either.)
• We’ve started drinking Manhattans which are delicious but dangerous. Delicious because of the booze, dangerous because there are cherries at the bottom, and I just end up pounding the drink so I can get the cherries faster.
• I’ve been doing an Advent activity with JR where we have a wee Bible lesson every day and then hang a corresponding ornament on his little tree. Yesterday we talked about original sin. Turns out that’s kind of a hard concept for a toddler to understand because he spent the rest of the day telling me that eating apples is bad.
• I slept until 9 this morning and didn’t get out of bed until 11. Grandparents are the shizz-nit.
• I still haven’t the leaves in our front yard. DEAL WITH IT, NEIGHBORS.

I’m not a big music fan. I mean, I *like* it and I’ll listen to pretty much anything, but oftentimes I’m just as happy sitting in silence.

But I have a few life moments that are unavoidably attached to a specific song. With JR’s third (!!!) birthday coming up, one keeps popping up in my mind.

In early March 2008, I was in the car on the way back to the office with a pregnancy test sitting in the seat beside me. This song came on the radio, the background music to my tearful whispers of “Please, please, please…” And I will always connect it to the moments before I found out that I was going to be a mama.

Do you have a song/moment like that? I’d love to hear about it.

A few days after I began the Prozac, I woke up one morning, and I felt fine.

Here’s the thing: up until that day, I had never felt fine. Not ever. I didn’t know what “fine” was. I thought I did; I thought there were periods when I thought I was doing quite well. I thought the Prozac was treating a relatively recent development in my emotional state. And then I woke up that day, and I realized that this was normal, and this was how I was supposed to feel all the time. And it was utterly, utterly new to me.

It was as if I had spent my entire life hearing a constant thrumming sound in the background, a percussive rhythm that became part of the fabric of my life. And then I woke up to silence, and I had no idea what silence was. And I could think, without all that noise.

Yes. That.

For me, those words perfectly articulate the difference I’m currently experiencing between treating depression and not treating depression. It might not be the same for others facing this condition/disease/struggle/whatever you want to call it, but I think it gives good insight — especially for friends and family who are trying understand what their loved one is going through.

Read the whole post here. And then read all of Alice’s posts because she’s fantastic.

(Side note: I know I have not done this month’s letter to JR. First I was left alone with The Child for 4 days/3 nights and then pizza tried to kill me. I’ll explain later.)

I would like to say that I’ve been off doing lots of fabulous and fantastic things but…well…I’ve just kinda been doing…stuff. My “thing”, I guess you could say.

Highlights:

Having dance parties.

Watching Tim Riggins. I mean, Friday Night Lights. Oh, who am I kidding, it’s all about Tim Riggins. Think Jordan Catalano but taller and in cowboy boots sometimes. And not a total douchebag.

Making feltboards (and accompanying accessories) for JR.

Reading A Game of Thrones. YES IT IS FANTASY WHAT OF IT.

Writing about depression (yes, AGAIN, I am such a buzzkill)

Watching every version of The Real Housewives (or as Ross calls it “Real Women Yelling At Each Other”).

—

What have you been up to?

JR and I came home from errands this morning to a strange kerfuffle happening in our pantry.

A kerfuffle of the feathery sort.

Yes. There was a BIRD in my HOUSE. A black, winged, gross bird who alternated between perching on the pineapple tucked away in the corner and flapping frantically into our windows with his death beak ready to kill me and my child.

(I have a thing about birds. I love them on pillows and curtains and bags. But they scare the bejeezus out of me in real life.)

Being the wonderfully calm and collected parent that I am, I hollered at JR to get upstairs and go into his room and play with his blocks, so help me God. Then I called my husband. My husband who was nestled all snug in his bird-free office, undoubtedly thinking to himself “Isn’t it awesome how if there were a bird in my house right now, I totally wouldn’t have to deal with it? My life is great!”

So we talked.

“Hi.”

“So there’s a bird in the house.”

“What?”

“A BIRD in the HOUSE. In the pantry.”

“How did it get in there?”

“I have no idea, but what do I do.”

“How big is it? Like a baby bird or a bird like as big as your head?”

“It’s probably half the size of my head, but it’s still bigger than any bird I would like to have in my house.”

“So what you’re saying is that you’d prefer to have no birds in your house?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you’re going to have to open the windows and then swoop it out of there with the broom.

“What.”

“Yeah.”

“Can’t I just open the door and wait for it to find its way out?”

“No, birds are dumb.”

“Ok, here I go. I’ll call you when it’s gone. Or when my eyes have been pecked out.”

“Bye!”

(I wish I were making that conversation up. Oh how I wish I were, that my husband, upon hearing the distress in my voice, would have booked it home to help me deal with our wildlife situation, but alas, no.)

Because I am me, I immediately thought he was wrong about the front door thing, and I opened it up. But I grabbed the broom because I can follow some directions.

And then I just stood there. As the bird kept slamming his dumb head into our pantry windows, down the hall from the open front door.

I moved out on to the porch. With the broom. I stood there some more, hoping a kind passerby would see me and come to my rescue. A few folks did walk by but they didn’t help. Probably because I didn’t say anything to them. Apparently a haggard woman clutching a broom on her front porch doesn’t communicate “Excuse me, kind sir, would you be willing to come inside and help with a bird removal?”

Eventually I went back inside and did my best bird talk.

“Psssst. Bird! Cheep cheep! Tweet! Over here!”

He was unimpressed.

After about 15 minutes of this, I decided one of two things was going to happen 1) the bird was going to get brave and venture out into the rest of my house, forcing me to move away forever or 2) it was going to eventually kill itself slamming its aforementioned dumb head into the glass, and then I’d have to deal with a DEAD bird in my house. Ew.

So I did the only thing that made sense: I wrapped myself up in Ross’s Eagle Scout blanket. Because a knit blanket is impervious to a frightened bird’s beak.

With a deep breath and silent prayer, I went in. Moving faster than I ever thought possible, I got the window open and high-tailed it out of there. A few seconds later, the bird completed one more (and extra dramatic, in my opinion) lap around the pantry before flying out of the window.

And then I spent the next 15 minutes cleaning up the bird shit he left all over the counter, floors, and windows.

Happy Friday, everyone.

I had a follow-up appointment with my doctor today — just over four weeks since I took that initial first step to get things back on track with my brain and all. Since it was time to check in with him, I figured it was time to check in with you all, too (since the comments, emails, phone calls, and text messages I got following that post showed me that I am, in fact not alone in this).

I’m feeling good. That heavy feeling is gone, most of the time, and I feel like a fog has definitely lifted. Lower days still pop up every now and then, but overall I think I’m functioning like the rest of the world does on a regular basis. And now that I’m getting a taste of how most people react to stressful situations (and, you know, life) I’m realizing that I definitely should have gotten my little bippy into the doctor’s office much sooner. I mean, how come none of you TOLD me that you can experience something stressful and annoying and yet still function in other parts of your life without letting said experience seep into every part of your existence, thus rendering you useless and in despair?

As far as the specifics go, I’m currently taking 25mg of Zoloft, once a day — that’s half of a regular pill. I tend to be sensitive to whatever medicine I take, so my doctor wanted me to start there and move up to 50mg after a couple weeks. Well, when I did that, once 2pm came around, I was ready for a three-hour, face-slammed-into-the-pillow-drool-all-over-my-chin nap. We agree that I do need to bump up the dosage, but I’m going to try taking the pill later in the day so the sleepies coincide with when I’m going to bed. I go back in six weeks for another follow-up to see how things are going.

When I was talking things over with my doctor, going back and forth on how to time my dosage and what I can do to counteract any side effects, I interrupted him with…

“AUGH. I just HATE this. I hate having to sit here and come up with a strategy to make my brain work properly.”

Being the awesome guy that he is, my doctor looked me in the face and said, “Listen. This isn’t ‘you.’ Having this doesn’t define you. You’re just in a dip and we need to get you back out. It’s not forever. We’re starting here and then we’re going to see how it goes. You’ll get there.”

And then I proposed to him.

Just kidding.

So there you have it. One month in, doing well, with plans to be doing even better very soon. I’ll take it.