Dear God: Just give me a heads up, would you?

We're Lutheran. I'm not so much Lutheran as not Lutheran, but my kin is Lutheran and since I'm of them, then I'm Lutheran, too. So, being a good Lutheran who isn't, I insist on going to church on Christmas Eve. Since I'm also the one who isn't, I typically just follow my parents around the globe and wherever they're going for Christmas Eve service, that's where I end up, and then my clingons follow me, and so on and so on.

This year we were at a fairly progressive Lutheran church. The pastor wore fancy jeans.

They sing songs with the karaoke screens that show you the lyrics, and they're usually songs that have been adulterated somehow. Not "Away in a Manger" or anything. No, we had a soloist (this alone I could write about for hours, but I will refrain) sing something about "Where's the Line for Jesus?" It's in the mall somewhere, according to her.

The pastor's pretty good at the talking parts. His messaging is pretty cool. So I was paying close attention when he started talking about Christmas lists and what you've asked for, and he said something like this: "God gives you what you need, not what you ask for." And then he launched into the Prayer of the Confederate Soldier, what with its message of be careful what you wish for and all.

And that's when the cold chill ran down my spine.

Hey, God. I am totally on board with you. I just really really could use a year where there isn't as much trauma as there has been the previous years. I can totally handle some hardship. Just look at the past few years! I've managed to keep my head afloat and my family's heads, too, right? And most of the time, except for large chunks of it, I have even maintained a pretty good attitude about it all. Right? OK, whatever, maybe not, I won't try to lie to you since you're God and all.

I'm just saying, maybe this upcoming year could be the Year of Heather? Kind of like the Year of the Goat, except different? And if you've decided 2011 isn't going to be the Year of Heather, could you at least float some sort of warning sign, like a flare in the night or something, so I can get my disaster preparedness kit ready? Cause you know how much I like to plan for the Worst Case Scenario.

There are a couple topics I'd like to really avoid in 2011 if at all possible. In no particular order, let's just say violence, famine, death, drugs, guns, cancer, cardiac problems, suicide, car accidents, danger, and guns, let's just take those off the table for 2011, kay? I will totally keep up my end of the bargain and do the absolute best I can to live the way you want me to live. I may swear a little more than you'd like, is that crossing a line? And if I shop too much, does that count? Cause I stopped shopping this year, but now I think I'd like to start again although just writing about it kind of makes me feel bad so no, I think I won't be shopping again this year.

Damn, that's going to make the new handbag I just ordered from Nordstrom kind of tricky. Well, I'll figure it out (with your help, I'm sure!), but I just want to say I appreciate all you've done for me and my family so far, and if we could just keep this between ourselves and keep that list of aforementioned items out of the picture, that would be awesome? Thanks.

I love you,

Heather
- H

Shoot. I thought I had ennui but it turns out I didn't know what that meant.

I had a lovely morning today. I had the day off for the 4th holiday, my mom came and took Griffin for his first date alone with Grandma (a tradition Cooper has enjoyed hugely this past year), and my hubs took Cooper fishing. The fishing only lasted ten minutes but the drive there and back afforded me an entire hour free.

I decided to work on my front yard's landscaping. It's an annual exercise in frustration, whereby I dig up the rocks surrounding the landscaping bed, cut out all the grass and weeds that have snuck under the rocks, and put them back in place. Oh, and I dug out a lot of the stinky chameleon plant I put in years ago and have regretted ever since. If you're ever at the garden nursery, DO NOT succumb to the lure of chameleon plant. Don't say I didn't warn you. Friends don't let friends plant that stinky dirt hog.

Anyhoodle, as I was out there sweating and pulling, swearing and whatnot, I suddenly had this overwhelming feeling. I don't want to call it a psychic moment or anything, because I didn't see anything or learn this week's lottery numbers. I just had a feeling.

It was the strangest thing. I suddenly had this feeling that change is on the wind.

OK, that's sounds dumb. It was a little breezy. No, it felt more like there's a cloud of change coming my way, only I couldn't tell if it was good or bad. It just is.

Ok, this still sounds dumb. Dumb and vague and slightly New-Agey, and for those of you who know me in person I'm not in the slightest bit New Agey.

I don't really know how to describe what it felt like, except maybe that it was a premonition that things for us will change soon? I tend to like change so it doesn't freak me out. In fact, after the events of the last month or two (or thirty-six) it would be kind of nice to have some forward movement (and yes, I'm assuming it'll be forward movement because I'm going to start being an optimist now).

I stood in the yard trying to figure out what to call this feeling, so I decided it was ennui. But then I googled ennui in the car tonight and as it turns out it means a gripping listlessness caused by boredom.

Clearly, that's not going on around here.

- H

I gots the fever

Oh, I can feel it coming on like I'm sure the mentally ill can feel a switch coming. Not that I don't qualify for that, too, but you know. I suddenly have the bloggin fever. So many things to write about, so little ability to focus my ADD and sit down and write it out.

So here's an abbreviated version for you. Things that have been rattling around in my mind these days.

1. Jenny Craig calls me too much. Seriously. I signed up last Friday, and I think they've called me four times since then?! My own mother hasn't called me that often. I mean, I've called her that often because I have to call her every day or my world seems to feel unglued, but you know. The Jenny people? I have to tell them to take me off their speed dial. When I If I fall off the wagon, I'll get back up from my sugar coma and dust the donut frosting off my face and get back on it without them calling me to check and make sure that I'm eating their ridiculously small entrees and not Krispy Kremes. Not that that's happened this week or anything. Twice. I'm just sayin. I go in for my weigh-in today. You may hear sobbing later on.

2. Pearl Jam totally stole a guitar riff from Bob Dylan. Or Shawn Colvin. I am in the midst of researching this blatant theft but haven't actually done any more than think about it while I'm in the car and write about it here. See, their new song (and by the by, I am very glad they're back to making music again) called "Just Breathe" starts with a guitar rhythm or riff that is exactly the same riff that starts Shawn Colvin's version of Bob Dylan's "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go." I know this because every time it comes on the radio, I think oh, yay, I'm going to hear some kickass Bob Dylan by way of Shawn Colvin now, and it doesn't happen. So. I'll be doing some further research on this matter, you can be sure of that.

3. NPR's fund drive is going on right now, so I regularly listen to other stations because I can't bring myself to donate money to NPR because I hate Daniel Schorr. Seriously, when I hear someone introducing him I will click the button and listen to something else. I would listen to Yo Gabba Gabba songs before I listen to the vitriol that man spews. I know NPR leans left and I know they attempt to maintain some balance. But there is no balance in this man. He's hate and bitterness and he's not impartial. SO, I refuse to give them any more of my money than has not already been taken out of my paycheck in the form of taxes. Hrmph. I am officially now a grumpy old man.

4. Does anyone else feel like the Census thing is getting a little out of hand? I fear someone may show up at my door with a handgun, threatening me if I haven't already filled out our census forms. I filled it out and mailed it in. You hear me, guvment? I filled it out! So stop with the constant advertising and billboards. How much does that cost, anyway? You could take half of that advertising money, throw it into the public schools pool and keep many thousands of teachers from being laid off this year. I'm just saying.

5. I got to eat lunch with my old friend Jenna a few weeks ago, on a Saturday no less, which is way unheard of, and it was so nice to see her. I can see now that I need to find some time and write more about this visit because it was fun.

Alright. That's it peeps. Thanks for listening.

I ripped off a bandaid

*ahem* So here goes. An explanation of what's really going on with me this week and possibly last. But mostly this week.

I don't know if you'll remember or not, but last fall I tried to stop taking Lexapro. I wrote about stopping it in the summer (wow, it was the spring - almost a year ago) and it took me a few months to actually get the nerve up to do it. It was kind of scary, letting go of the safety net that saved my life at one point. I'm being dramatic, but you get the idea.

Anyhoodle, I stopped taking it slowly and was finally off of it around the first of October. By November I was back on it. I don't exactly know why, except that I'd just started a new position at work and thought maybe that wasn't the best time to do that kind of thing?

Recently it started bothering me that I was still taking the lowest dose. I didn't think I needed it, but I did need the intestinal fortitude to quit. And I was having (am having) intestinal problems so I thought I needed to stop to see what own body would do without any meds in it.

It helped that I started forgetting to take it almost every night, so at best I was getting every other night? Eventually one night last week I just said forget it, and didn't take it again. Just like ripping off a bandaid.

I warned my husband to watch for crazy behavior. And I felt fine.

Then I got the wicked cold from hell. And here's where things get a little confusing. I was SICK this week. Flu-like symptoms, cold symptoms, fatigue, sleeplessness and lots of other stupidity including making bad decisions and bawling like a baby.

When I got back from Dallas I sat with my trusty laptop and looked up "Lexapro withdrawal symptoms."

Check it. This is the list I pulled off some antidepressant website or another.

Withdrawal side-effects/reactions from (SSRI) Anti-depressants which may be seen within 8-hours, often includes a spontaneously experience of a "flu-like" syndrome, feeling "crummy", tired, achy, etc.. In addition to the flu-like symptoms: anxiety, dizziness, fatigue, headache, migraine-like feelings, nerves jangling when moving eyes, continuous indigestion, neck and back pain, psychotic features such as visual and/or audial hallucinations/illusions, insomnia, nausea, restlessness, "electrical shock" like phenomena/electrical surges or shocks through the head and/or body, hyper-sensitivity of the nervous system to light, sound, colours & stressors, tremors, tinnitus and a vertiginous-like experience, depressive thoughts, suicidal thoughts, homicidal thoughts, extreme anger, severe agitation, extreme irritability, "over-reacting", ringing in ears and throbbing in head, vomiting, paranoia, aggressive behaviour, rollercoaster emotions rapidly following up on each other, out of character behaviour, severe malaise, general dysphoria, derealization, panic attacks.

Can you believe that? What I thought was the Yellow Swine Fever Flu was probably a run of the mill head cold combined with twelve or fourteen of the above-mentioned side effects from withdrawing the Lexapro. You see, I practiced perhaps the worst form of DXing a drug. I stopped abruptly.

The recommended way is to gradually taper down your dosage until your own body can take over. Like slowly pulling a bandaid instead of ripping your skin off with the scab.

I'm going to stick it out. I want to know what it's like to be free and clear of the medication for a while and I want to get to the bottom of my bottom problems. This time I'll give myself more time to let my body adjust. I've taken it for 18 months at least, I need to give myself a few months to let my own brain make its serotonin. If it can't do that, I know where to go for help.

P.S. I especially liked derealization and over-reacting as side effects of withdrawal. So much fun it's like a circus funhouse.

- H

The one where I cried like a baby. In a work meeting. And there's swearing involved.

This has been a shit week. I try not to swear on this blog out of respect, although I love to do it in my real world. Cause the internets is my fake world. Sometimes you just gotta call a spade a spade.

I brought The Sickness with me to Dallas on Wednesday. Leading up to the meeting was a little like living hell on wheels. My kids were wild and unruly. My house was a disaster. My health was in the shitter. I wasn’t sleeping well because my house’s furnace has a life of its own and really likes to heat the place up to 80ºF despite being set on 68ºF.

I ran away on Wednesday morning shrieking “free at last, free at last!”

My jubilation didn’t last long. I felt like death on a warming plate during the day on Wednesday. Hot, cold, sweaty, clammy, random pains and then more sweating.

My peers and my manager went out to this great Mexican restaurant for dinner Wednesday night (Javier’s in Dallas? You been there?) and I had a margarita but not more than two. Maybe.

Sooooo, I didn’t sleep Wednesday night. Tossed, turned, regretted my Chihuahua cheese stuffed fillet entrée that tasted so good. Tossed more. Moaned out loud. Sweated. Turned down the heat. I finally fell asleep at 4:30. Alarm went off at 6:00 and I texted my manager that I’d be late. She knew I was sick so it was cool.

I proceeded to do just fine the rest of the meeting, thank you very much. More sweating. More hot/cold flashes and random pains in random places in my GI system. But overall, fine.

I stayed in Thursday night and rented Precious and cried like a baby and couldn’t fall sleep again (until eleven which is way past my bedtime) but for different reasons because the story was just grinding through my brain over and over.

And then there was today. Today started with a meeting that became slightly adversarial. You know what never happens in my industry? Adversarial meetings. We’re trained to be nice and friendly to others. We’re in sales. We’re typically attractive, friendly people. So it was a little nerve-wracking to watch said attractive friendly people get into heated arguments with representatives from an outside vendor (who are not trained to be attractive, friendly people), where actual individuals were laid out on the road to be run over by the proverbial bus.

Then I left that meeting and went to my own district meeting.

Somewhere between that district meeting and the time I found myself riding the shuttle bus to the airport I had this totally life-altering revelation where I realized things aren’t going well and there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it. Where I realized some people are in the wrong jobs and there isn’t a damn thing anyone else is going to do about it.

This is where I started crying.

Cause yeah, that’s what I did.

Then I got to the airport and watched some jackwad go through security talking super loudly and saying “I am not a terrorist” over and over. I was silently wishing TSA would take him aside and do a body cavity search until all the alcohol in his system wore off. But they didn’t.

And there you are. I sobbed off and on the rest of the day. Including when my mom emailed me that she also misses Grandma Clare a lot, despite the fact that she’s been gone for seven years.

Oh crap, I’m crying again.

Dammit!

Next post is about bandaids. Believe me, this will all make sense.

- H

thank God my legs are attached or I'd have lost them in the Atlanta airport

This will go down in my personal history book as one of those not so great weeks. Not because there has been anything super bad that's happened to me or anything [pause while I take time to knock on my wooden desk].

I had to go to Atlanta on Monday for another meeting. The beginning of the year always brings with it a lot of meetings which mean a lot of travel. Everyone who has a project or leads a team wants to get together and talk about said project or team in person. I could always do without the in person part, but they don't ask my opinion on these things and so I book my flights and show up with bells on.

Anyone who happened to be lucky enough to read my post on Monday before I deleted it for its negativity knows that I was in a crapbag mood as I was leaving. Questioning the meaning of life, the meaning of my life, why other people have stupid meanings of life, et cetera. After I landed I deleted it cause I don't want to junk up the world with stupid stuff like that and besides it wasn't like the post was going anywhere with all those rhetorical questions.

I spent my three days in the stinky Marriott, sat dutifully through the meetings, learned a lot, and listened to my boss's boss ask a bajillion rhetorical questions. He's famous for answering a question by asking another one. Or seventeen. He's a very smart man with a lot of talent and a great ability to make a five minute explanation last seventy-three minutes or until the audience strokes out, whichever happens first.

Yeegads the man can talk.

Along the way, I managed to lose my new driver's license. Which would be a blessing because the picture is just so very bad, except that when you travel by air these days they really don't like you using expired IDs. And Atlanta has those big body scanners so I was worried after I got through security that they'd flag me for a body scan since I was clearly trying to scam them by getting myself trapped in a distant city with no up-to-date driver's license. But alas, I breezed through security and made my way to the terminal, whereby I managed to lose my work laptop and the wireless card stuck in it.

So now I have no laptop and no license.

But! In my newfound attempt to always look on the bright side of things, I no longer have to look at my seriously unflattering picture when I pull out my wallet, and I don't have to enter calls or do a whole lot of computer work for another day. When they send me the replacement laptop. Because God forbid I be without technology at all times.

*sigh*

Next week I have jury duty. At the rate I'm going I'll be stuck on a two-week murder trial.

I'm cutting out the Kristen dress this afternoon. Wish me luck that I don't cut my hand or something.

- H

So, no dog poop on the hand...that's a good sign, right?

Let me just start this post by saying I kind of dread New Year's. The whole shlebanger, the Eve part, the Day part, the learning how to write a new date on checks part. Not that I'm seventy-three years old and still write checks, but if I did.

The last two years have been Bad, in the classical classification sense of how you classify years. 1990 was a Good year. 2008 was a Bad year.

2008 started like this, on the Eve part: I was sleeping downstairs in the frigid guest bedroom while my six-week-old baby slept in his carseat in his crib in his frigid bedroom. At least, I think that's what we were doing. Either that or he was sleeping in his carseat that was sitting on top of the coffee table while I was sleeping on the couch in the family room. For warmth.

My husband and my older boy, almost 2 at that time, were sleeping up in my king-sized Heavenly Bed (not the copyrighted kind, just the kind that I put together from Costco but it's the same feeling). And my dog Binnie was sleeping with them. She used to sleep with us every night, tucked up under the covers until she overheated and then down by our feet.

Sometimes Binnie would have to go potty in the middle of the night. I'd hear her whining at the end of the bed, pick her up and take her out. She's short. The bed is tall. She can't get down by herself.

On the Eve part of 2008, Binnie woke up with a bellyache from eating too much people food. She whined. She whined some more. My husband snored. You can feel it coming, can't you?

And then in the morning, my husband finally woke up. Then I heard some shouting and some water running, and the year started like this: he woke up and put his hand in a warm wet pile of dog poop. The kind that probably accompanied stomach cramps. The kind that ruined my down comforter and sent me to Costco to get a new one. It also included shouting at each other about how she probably tried to warn him and he slept right through it, yada yada. Binnie hasn't slept upstairs since then. She doesn't even want to, it was so traumatizing.

Yeah, that was New Year's 2008. And you know what? 2008 sucked. A family member was exposed for extorting money and gambling it away on the gambling boats. Relations fell apart. Bad habits started as a retaliation for said extortion and gambling. And then my husband's Grammy J died before Christmas. It was a Bad year.

You'd have thought 2009 would have been better, right? Except you'd be wrong.

2009 started with the Eve part that included me getting the stomach flu sometime around 8:00. I was still sleeping in the cold downstairs guest bedroom, only my one-year-old had thankfully graduated to sleeping in his crib without the carseat. It was still super cold, except when you have the stomach flu sometimes cold air feels good.

And then there were car paint fumes in my family room, and lots of screaming, and someone called someone an ugly bitch. And then I spent the whole Day part of that New Year's sick as my dog the year before, vowing to never again start a year or spend another minute letting someone call me an ugly bitch.

And then 2009 included lots of other crap like drama and whatnot that would make a great novel but when it's your life it sucks.

So this year, as we headed towards the Eve part of 2010, I was a little nervous as you may imagine.

Only, the Eve part passed with no drama and so far the Day part has been ok too. I even got to go to the fabric store for an hour and found Pendleton wool for half off. That rocked.

So I guess maybe it's safe, and I can finally take some time to think about resolutions I'd like to make. I can think of the first one already. Never put my hand in dog poop on the first day of a year. Next?

- H

Perspective

I have been sitting here mulling over how to write this post, what to say. It all started when I read a comment on my previous post. Here's what it said:

Anonymous said...
In this economy, you should be happy to be able to take a vacation to Hawaii with your family.


I had to laugh out loud a little, and then I carefully went back and read my previous posts about our vacation, trying to find the part where I'd said I wasn't happy about our vacation?

I couldn't find it, but I'm not good at reading my own writing and hearing what it sounds like to other people. I only know my own voice, I know what's going on in my head and in my life and what comes out of my fingers.

Does that even make any sense?

Anyhoodle, I think the comment illustrates a very important point about all of us walking this earth [and the rest of this post is not at all directed at the Anonymous commenter, it's just something I've felt like I needed to write down for a long time now].

Be careful what you assume about people. That old adage about assumptions making an ass out of you and me is probably more true than I'd like it to be.

For instance, have you ever had friends or acquaintances that you just thought lived the perfect life? Maybe their marriage seemed perfect or their family seemed so happy or whatever. And then you find out that their spouse had been cheating on them for a decade with someone they'd had a second family with, and all of this come out after their untimely death in a car accident? This is just an example of some whackadoo story I might have heard.

Or have you known anyone who just really seemed by all appearances to be totally white bread, and then you are shocked to find out they'd been living a double life of crime or depravity or what-have-you? And all of that came out after this person had been murdered while searching for drugs or sex or something in the middle of the day on a workday? That one happened to someone, too. Not someone I know, but someone I know knows the person. Knew the person.

Anyway, I am blessed to live the life I live. I love it, I don't take too many minutes of it for granted [maybe five minutes once, and I regret four of them]. But it certainly isn't no cake walk and while I don't talk about my struggles on this blog anymore (yikes, that was a bad idea eh?), I still got em. And they're whacked out. But they're mine.

I read a quote once that I can't remember for the life of me. But the jist of it is to go easy on people, because you never know what burden they carry with them. I'm not asking that courtesy for myself, I'm just saying. Be mindful that others may be in pain. Be kind. Karma is a wonderful thing.

- H