Just kind of feel like writing about my Jadyn this morning. I was thinking about all of this during our drive in to work this morning and wanted to get it down, if I can.

Jadyn is, apparently, having a flare-up of her MS. Among other things, she has a twitch in her face that pretty much doesn't seem to stop. It's subtle -- you wouldn't see it if you were having a casual conversation with her, but it just keeps on going, and she says it feels like an electrical buzz under her skin. The first medicine her doc prescribed for this made her so foggy and tired that she was almost non-functional. She couldn't lift her arms, but the twitching stopped. Now she's on a different medicine that doesn't make her feel so bad, but the twitching is continuing along merrily.

At first, I thought that it probably wasn't so bad. I've had twitches before...they're annoying, but they don't hurt, right? But I'm thinking now that it's probably pretty bad for a couple of reasons. First, even though it's subtle when you look at her, I'm sure it's like when you have a cold sore or a zit or something on your face and you're sure that whoever you're talking to sees it just like it's got a big red bullseye around it. I'm sure it feels to her like a big blinking neon sign saying that something is wrong; that she has MS. Your face is what you show to the world. Jadyn's face is beautiful. Yeah...I'm probably biased, but strangers stop her to tell her that she's beautiful. She's radiant. That's the kind of thing you want people to notice, not that half of your face is spasming.

And this is on top of the physical irritation and discomfort of it. I know it bothers her because she's mentioned it several times. Jadyn is the very definition of 'stoic', so that means something.

We're going to a new doctor tomorrow morning. Her current doctor is kind of hard-headed and enjoys hearing himself talk, whether or not he's answering Jadyn's particular questions. We've heard really good things about the new one and I have high hopes that she'll be helpful.

In the meantime, I'm thinking about my girl, who is struggling with this awful disease (facial spasms are just the newest symptom, and are unlikely to be the last). Sometimes she seems distant to me and cold, and sometimes when I just want to be a girl in love and laugh with her and hold her, and she is only partly there for me, I forget that she's probably doing all she can just to hold herself together.

You ever have one of those things that you feel bitter about even though years have passed and you know you should have let it go long ago?

My mom has an entire list of those things. There are some subjects we just don't bring up to her...like how my father's siblings wanted him to pay taxes on a farm they all owned and on which he did all the work...that'll get her spitting mad almost instantly, and it happened about 35 years ago.

Turns out I have one of those things too, and I just feel like writing about it. You know...because writing about it will make me feel better. Or because I'm shallow and just can't let it go.

I was with my ex-girlfriend She-Ra for about three years. I loooooved her. We fought all the time, she had a terrible temper, we rarely had sex, but I adored her and would have walked over hot coals if I thought it would have made her happy. So naturally, she left me for another woman.

Oddly, this is not the part I'm bitter about. Really...she did me a favor. I realize that every morning when I wake up beside Jadyn.

When I was with She-Ra, we had a little business together. Basically, I was self-employed doing an art-sign-ish type thing, and she helped me. When we broke up, I continued with my business, but she was essentially out of a job. I tried to continue working with her, but it was ultimately too painful and I had to stop for the sake of my sanity. Thereafter ensued several months of bickering and unhappiness with her threatening to sue to prevent me from plying my trade (something I could do without her but she couldn't do without me), and me giving her money when I could (I did, after all, have Nate to support), and just generally being about as miserable as I'd ever been.

So about nine months after we broke up, Christmas rolled around. By that time, we'd managed to get on more or less civilized speaking terms again. She began campaigning for a cowboy hat. She desperately wanted one and let me know that she didn't think her new girlfriend was going to provide this cowboy hat. She also let me know that she didn't have any money to buy christmas presents for her parents.

So I gave her about a third of my earnings for December (my busiest month), and bought her a very nice black cowboy hat.

She did buy presents for her parents, but also spent a good bit of that money buying presents for the new girlfriend.

This is still not the part about which I am bitter. As it turns out, I've always liked her new girlfriend and begrudge her very little.

She invited me to come to her parent's house so that we could exchange gifts (so that I could give her the cowboy hat). She loved the hat. It looked great on her. Very sexy. And then I opened her gift to me.

And here's the part that still grinds my ass unto this very day: It was a cassette tape. To be exact, it was Cassette 3 of a motown collection. I'd seen that tape and the other dozen or so that were part of the collection in pretty much every gas station I'd stopped in during the previous few months. They weren't free with gasoline purchase or anything, but my guess is that she bought that tape with change from a twenty after she'd filled her tank at the gas station.

So there it is. My ugly underbelly, displayed for anyone cares to view it.

You know what makes me feel really bad about still being bitter about this? We really are good friends now. She-Ra and her girlfriend (who once said I should call her Wiz or Diz or Fiz on my blog) are two of my very best friends. They've supported me through some rough times. And the real irony is that Nate and I have spent a couple of christmases with them, and they couldn't possibly be warmer or more generous.

Which just goes to show...well...something, I guess.

It's alright...no need for panic...I've hijacked my blog back.

I am not, in fact, having any sort of obscene relationship with a book. A little fondling is not so terrible, is it? After all, it's filled with all these wonderful illustrations...I couldn't help myself.

Actually, I am in the midst of a big reading phase these days. I've always been a bookworm, but here lately there seem to be so many wonderful things to read that I can't bear to finish one book without the next already in hand and waiting for me.

Right now I'm reading Stephen King's 'The Dark Tower', which is the last of the gunslinger series. As I mentioned before, the illustrations are beautiful, and I'm hoping the story is equally good. I'm actually almost afraid to read this one, because my expectations are so high. How could they not be after reading the previous six books in the series and mostly loving them? What's going to happen? Will Roland breach the Tower? Will the Crimson King fall? What of Jake and Eddie and Susannah? And Oy? Will there be an ultimately satisfying ending for them? And how is Stephen King going to deal with the fact that he killed himself off in the last book? And what about the little teasing threads of the Tower series that have appeared in his other books? I am anxiously awaiting an appearance by Jack from 'The Talisman' and 'Black House.' I'm afraid I'll be disappointed if he doesn't show up. I will post a follow up to this, wherein I won't answer these questions (don't want to spoil it for anyone else), but I will indicate my general level of satisfaction with the outcome.

The book I just finished is called 'The Passage' by Connie Willis. It was excellent. I blew through about 800 pages in record time, even for me. This one was about a couple of people who were researching the Near Death Experience and what it's purpose might be. It wasn't a 'light at the end of the tunnel' kind of cheesy thing, either. It was more scientific, and very compelling. Kept me turning pages.

In addition to that, I'm also in the middle of reading 'Blow Fly' by Patricia Cornwell. I put it down to read 'The Dark Tower'. I don't have a very high expectation for this book, but I'm reading it because I used to love Patricia Cornwell and I'm giving her one more chance. Basically my problem with her is that her character, Kay Scarpetta, a medical examiner, has gotten progressively more depressed and the degree to which her life sucks has increased significantly over the course of this series of books...until after the last book, 'Black Notice', I just wanted her to go throw herself under a bus. I don't know how this character gets up in the mornings. But...being an eternal optimist, I'm hoping things will be looking up for ol' Kay. We'll see. There's yet another book in this series which is out in hardback now, and if this one turns out to be less relentlessly miserable and depressing than the last few, I'll buy it.

Another series of books I'm really enjoying are Janet Evanovich's 'One for the Money', 'Two for the Dough', etc. series. These are great! They are the literary equivalent of potato chips and you can't eat just one. There are ten of these, and I'm up to the fifth. As soon as I finish with Stephen King and Patricia Cornwell, I'll be returning to Janet Evanovich. With this author, it's all about the story and the characters. She doesn't bother much with flowery language, but the story will grab you and drag you right along, and the characters are so quirky and fun that you end up really bonding with them. Stephanie Plum, Evanovich's main character, is a fledgling bounty hunter, who has an entire array of unlikely sidekicks to help her out -- chief among them is Lula, an ex-hooker, but there's also a drag queen, a dwarf, a hamster, and Stephanie's crazy grandmother -- and who knows who else will turn up in the next five books. I can't wait.

Another writer I've recently discovered who deserves a mention is Lisa Scottoline. She gets compared to John Grisham because they are both lawyers and write legal thrillers, but I actually prefer her stories to his. Firstly, her main characters are pretty much always women, which is fun, but secondly and most importantly, her pacing is incredible. Don't pick up one of her books if you aren't prepared to be engaged right from the first page. Her stories start off fast and only speed up as they go. Go to www.scottoline.com to see what I mean - she has first chapters to most of her books posted online.

What's everyone else reading? :)

This site has been hijacked by none other than the Queen of the Ferrari's.

I thought I would let the public at large know that Charlotte is being held hostage by Stephen King and his newest book which arrived by Amazon Messenger at my front door yesterday.

I am offering a HUGE ransom for the safe return of my darling wife before I am submerged in the gloom of weekend turmoils by my lonesome.

Why......it was just last night she could be found in a GROCERY store of all places FONDLING the book! Sniffing it even! Her eyes were wide with anticipation! She just stood there! Transfixed! Licking her lips! Her heart was racing!

Good God! It was almost obscene, I tell you!

And, then, out of nowhere, out of the blue, just at lunch today..... He's got her in his grasp!!!

::faint::

What is a worried wife to do?!

So, this morning I'm walking from the car to go into the building where I work. (Oddly, I do that almost every day) There's a big old-fashioned wooden door that is the particular entrance that I use. It's always locked, and I do have a key. But THIS morning, I walked up to the door, all the time clicking the electronic clicker thingy that opens my car door. I wasn't even thinking about it, just expected it to open the door for me in much the same way you expect the door at the grocery store to open as you step on the black mat in front of it. You know if that door didn't open, you'd walk right into the thing and break your nose.

Well, I would anyway.

I know this because of The Time I Walked into a Door Carrying a Basketful of Laundry. It was at this apartment complex where I lived with one of my many ex-girlfriends. We'll call this one She-Ra (she was, and is, very strong). I was carrying a basketful of laundry to the laundry room, which was in the building adjacent to the one we lived in. There was a foyer I had to pass through with a wooden door with decorative moulding. The doorknob had been broken for months -- you didn't have to turn it, just push on the door and go out. Unbeknownst to me, they'd finally gotten around to fixing the doorknob. So I go trucking through the foyer with my laundry out in front of me and try to open the door by pushing it with the laundry basket. The fact that the door failed to open in no way slowed my forward motion. I kept right on going. The basket crumpled. My bottom lip met the decorative moulding and split open. To add insult to injury (a recurrent theme in my life), I was sporting a very painful cold sore on my bottom lip already. Actually, that might be more like adding injury to insult. Or injury to injury. Whatever. It hurt. She-Ra was inappropriately amused.

I have also been known to walk right through a screen door. We lived in Canada for a while when I was a kid and had a sliding screen door out onto our patio, When it was dark outside, you couldn't really see the screen. The first time, I merely walked into it, stretched it, bounced back, felt stupid, opened the door and went out. The second time, I walked through the thing. When I walk, I go like I'm going somewhere. I have a lot of momentum. I walked into the door, stretched it, briefly registered that there was some resistance, and kept right on walking. Tore the screen right out of the frame. This all happened in just a fraction of a second. I got this really cute little abrasion on my nose with the pattern of the screen door.

The good news is that before I banged my face into the door into my building this morning, I realized that the clicker wasn't going to work. No insult, no injury.

This time.

On a completely different subject, I've been asked a couple of times where the link to Jadyn's blog went. I lost it when I got rid of that picture of myself that never would display. I'll put it back as soon as I figure out how.

My Life Against the Wall

Boom

boom

boom

beating

my blood against my veins
my feet against the ground
my fists against the wall

my body against your body

my life against the wall

beating
old as death

ceaseless.

a womb enclosed me
and I beat my head against it
until I emerged
bloody
gasping
into a box
surrounded by a wall -
covered by a stone.

I beat my life against the wall.

And my heart wants blood
or love
or both
and your body against mine
beating in a rhythm as old as death
while my feet beat the ground
and the wall doesn’t move

My bones break
but the wall doesn’t crumble

My heart breaks
and the wall doesn’t move

I beat my life against the wall
in a rhythm as old as death

knowing
somehow

that in the wall is a door…

and somewhere…

there is a key.

Aug. 2 I've reached what I believe is going to be the end of the Effexor Experiment. I took it faithfully for a month with no effect whatsoever on my mood (unless the increase in irritability can be ascribed to effexor), so I'm quitting. No more effexor. I took my last one last Thursday or Friday and so far have been in a better mood overall since I quit. That might be coincidence, I realize....but nevertheless. Turns out I was on a baby dose anyway, but I was just uncomfortable enough with the idea of anti-depressants in general that I'm not really into the idea of trying a higher dose or a different med.

On the other hand, next time I'm really in the pits I'll probably do a 180 and change my mind entirely and beg for prozac.

Actually, speaking of prozac...Kallie's reaction to prozac is what made me think maybe the effexor was responsible for making me so irritable and angry for the last few weeks. She always got like that on prozac. I realize effexor is a different drug...but can you really predict how an individual is going to react to a particular medicine? When I was in my twenties I had some real troubles with Irritable Bowel Syndrome and my doc put me on this medicine called Axid. I had a horrible, twisting, painful stomach ache the entire time I was on it. I called the doc and said I thought the medicine was making matters worse and she was very aggravated with me and told me it couldn't POSSIBLY be causing the symptoms I was having, but if I was so convinced, I should stop taking it. I did and the pain went away immediately, never to return. So...I'm just sayin'. Drugs don't always have the intended effect.

Which reminds me, for some reason, of The Time I Smoked Pot. Now that was weird. I was expecting to get all mellow and giggle a lot, but instead I spent an hour or two with absolutely no short term memory. It was like that movie 'Memento', except that instead of forgetting everything every five minutes, I was forgetting everything every 10 or 15 seconds. I'd be in the middle of a sentence and realize that I couldn't remember what the first part of the sentence had been...so I'd stop talking and just shake my head. It was a bizarre experience and not one I intend to repeat.

Ok...it's Monday morning and I am babbling....

Assumptions will get you in trouble. You know the cliche...I don't even have to write it here.

I went to a family reunion weekend before last which was occasioned by the sixtieth birthday of my father's youngest sister. I had a great time reconnecting with people I grew up with but hadn't seen in a long time. One of them was my cousin Freddie (not her real name) who reminded me of a tale I hadn't thought of in years.

When we were kids, Freddie lived next door to me in an apartment over a pool hall that my family owned. I was a year older than her (still am), and we hung out quite a bit -- walked to school together and such. We were probably eight and seven at the time.

So this one day, we were walking home from school and one of us spotted a broken oar lying under a bush on the way out of the school yard. It was made of wood, and what was left of it was the business end -- the part with the paddle. It looked, in fact, an awful lot like the wooden paddles they used at school for beating the Bad Kids (something I never experienced as I was a Good Kid). It was it's simularity to the school's paddles that prompted me to say the following: "Hey, if you can catch me before we get home, I'll let you hit me with that!"

This is where I made the fatal assumption that I could run faster than Freddie.

So I took off running and Freddie picked up the oar and came running behind me. I was immediately alarmed that she seemed to be moving a lot faster than I thought she could. I made it the block and a half to my apartment with her hot on my heels, but still behind me...until I reached the stairs that led to my door. That's when I learned that not only was Freddie faster than me, but she was freakishly strong. She swung that oar like she meant it. I didn't actually climb the rest of the stairs as much as I was propelled up them by the repeated whacks to my rear end. By the time I reached the top, I was screaming and begging her to stop.

I feel that it's only fair to Freddie to add that the spanking my father gave her at that point was largely undeserved. Firstly, as she kept telling him, "..she told me to!" (his reply to that was something having to do with whether she'd jump off a bridge if I said to), and secondly, I was mean to her on a regular basis. I liked her just fine, but I was older and thought I was smarter (and faster) and so I got my way a lot. I'm sure I deserved to have my ass whipped.

With an oar.

A lot.

I couldn't sit down for a week.

Thanks Freddie.

Alright then. Enough angst -- on to Weird Boy Stories.

I'd been considering writing on several other topics (as I mentioned in a previous post), but then my nephew, Marshall (not his real name) did something the other day which was both appalling and amusing (depending on your sense of humor). Marshall's misadventure got me thinking on the topic of how odd boys really are. I'm sure it's caused by cooties.

First, about Marshall, Gwen's second-born...he's fifteen and has always been a bit of an odd boy among odd boys. By which I mean that 'oddness' itself takes on new meaning when you're talking about Marhsall. When he was a little kid, we always used to say that he seemed to be in his own world most of the time, and it certainly seemed to be a strange little world. For example, Marshall would get "noony". What being "noony" meant was that he would run around saying "noony, noony, noony" and running into you with his forehead. Repeatedly.

Eventually we had to buy a tranquilizer gun.

There was also the time when he pooped in the floor of Nate's bedroom. He was four-ish...recently and unreliably potty-trained - still at that stage where the after-potty clean-up requires adult participation. I was babysitting him and he'd gone to the bathroom and been gone a long time. I went to check on him and found him in there standing in the vicinity of the toilet...

On a totally different subject, I once found my dog standing in the shower. It wasn't on, he was just standing there behind the curtain, looking mournful. But back to the nephew.

Anyway, he was just standing there in his underwear and when I asked what he was doing, he told me he'd pooped. Well, I didn't see any poop. There wasn't any TP or anything in the toilet either. I checked his underwear to see if he'd gone into my bathroom to poop in his underwear (which would not have surprised me), and didn't find anything there either, except some very minor evidence that the pooping had actually occurred. Somehow I doubted the kid had done the deed, cleaned himself up, and flushed without any help from me. As I'd mentioned, he was new to the whole process.

I asked him, "Ok, Marshall...where's the poop?"

His response: "I don't know."

So now I was on a poop hunt.

After I'd assured myself that it wasn't in the bathroom, I went into Nate's room, and there it was. I stood in the doorway and hoped that the irregularly shaped 'thing' in the middle of Nate's floor was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figure. I was holding out some hope still that angels or fairies had spirited away the runaway poop and I wouldn't have to deal with it. No such luck.

But Marshall's all grown now and as far as I know, his potty training issues are far behind him. That doesn't keep him out of trouble though.

Just the other day, he was on a bus, heading off to church camp. He and another kid got the bright idea to make a little sign that said 'Help Us' and hold it up for passing motorists to see.

After the THIRD call to 911, the police pulled the bus over to see who was kidnapping a busload of kids to sell into white slavery.

Marshall narrowly avoided being booked for Inciting Panic.

Marshall's brother Jackson (not his real name either), Gwen's third child, is almost as strange. He's eight now (I think -- it's hard to tell because he's recently taken up lying about his age). This kid will talk your arms off if you let him. That's not strange, but what is strange is that he went all the way through kindergarten without speaking a word. Not one. Not to his teacher, not to his fellow kindergarteners, not to the lunch lady, not nobody. His teacher called Gwen to ask if he COULD speak, and that was the first she'd heard of it. I assume when she asked him how school was going, he probably gave her the typical 'boy' response: 'fine', neglecting to mention the whole 'I'm pretending to be a mime' thing. He would do his work and all that, just never spoke. Fortunately, by first grade, he was over the silent thing. Or unfortunately - depends on your point of view.

I also recently heard that Jackson was keeping a dead bird hidden in his room. He didn't kill it or anything, just found it dead and brought it home. He was heart-broken when his mother made him get rid of it. See...boys think things like that are INTERESTING.

Cooties.

Nate himself still exhibits what I think of 'boy weirdness' from time to time, even though he's reached the ripe old age of seventeen. He still loves to lurk outside the bathroom door waiting to scare the bejesus out of whoever comes out the door. For more examples of his 'boy weirdness', please refer to my earlier posts.

PB is also gearing up to join the ranks of the Weird. He gave himself a haircut the other day with a 'shave your legs' razor. He was in the bathroom, on the toilet at the time. I guess he got bored. He is also at that 'adult participation in the clean-up' phase when it comes to potty training. When he called for Jadyn to come assist, it actually took her a moment to notice the patches of hair gone from his head...one in the front, one on the side...As she was spotting the razor on the floor, and the sprinkling of hair on his shoulders, he looked up at her and, pointing to the back of his head, matter-of-factly asked, "Am I bleeding?" No panic, he just wanted to know. And he was. He'd taken a little chunk of skin with the hair from the back of his head.

Fortunately she was able to shape up his hair and make him beautiful again. She could fix that, but there doesn't seem to be a cure for just being a boy. You just have to ride it out.

I took an Effexor this morning.

I've been mulling over the advice I've been given by people I know and by people I don't know (that would be all of you 'anonymous' people....and hey, would it hurt ya to sign a comment? Do you have any idea how much I need closure?), and I've decided to go ahead and try the pills. This comment was particularly helpful: "Do what you love to do. Feel every moment as a precious thing. Tap into the love and joy around you and in you. Laugh. Resolve to let go of the fear that grips you, or at least loosen its suffocating hold. Leap before you look. That's how you can resolve to be happy. While you learn how to do all that, pills can help. You can always stop taking them if they don't."

I've read through that a bunch of times. There's a lot of good stuff in there. Doing what you love to do...that's important. Joy is important. Now...the leaping before you look part....well, I have lots of stories about the times I leapt without looking and the results were generally not pretty. But the idea of leaping before you look is dear to my soul. I'm just afraid to do it much anymore. I think that part of me just expresses itself in increments with tiny little laspses in my impulse control.

Perhaps I should just try bungee jumping as a religious experience. The ultimate leap.

Nah. That's too cliche.

Maybe pole vaulting would be better. Yeah...how many 40 year old first time pole vaulters do you know? That's what I thought. Although I do wonder if I came running up to the thing (the goal post, the bar...whatever you call it), and I pushed down with that big stick and started to jump....is it possible that my weight could actually snap the stick in two? That would be embarrassing. It would probably require therapy to get over it. And then I'd be right back where I started again.

Leaping without looking is how I ended up out of the south and back in Ohio (and coincidentally, it's how I ended up in the south in the first place). I'm not saying it's an entirely bad thing being here...I wouldn't have met Jadyn if I'd stayed in Georgia; but it was definitely a huge leap without much forethought. I just knew that I needed SOMETHING to change. Anything at all. But when I got back here, I just felt so shell-shocked. I walked around in a fog for weeks wondering, 'omigod, what did I do?' until I finally got used to the idea that I was here.

I had managed to forget while I was in Georgia what my family is like. And let me interject that I love my sisters and my mother...but I'd forgotten what it can be like to be around them. I'd forgotten how much drama they move about in and how easy it is to get caught up in it. I'd forgotten how abrasive their speech to one another is. I came here and felt like my skin was going to be burned off my body by all the caustic remarks. I'd come here in the first place to have their support, but I didn't realize how tender I'd gotten in the years apart from them. I wasn't used to being spoken to that way anymore. It hurt until I toughened up again and learned to dish it out as well as take it.

It's funny...Jadyn says she could tell early on that I loved her because I was tender with her. I didn't talk to her like I talked to my sisters. I don't know if she ever understood that talking to them the way that I do was self-defense.

You know how I said a few posts back that I was attracted to 'tough yet vulnerable'? I think that's what my family is like in a way. Abrasive as hell on the outside, but I think they're all fragile on the inside. They've all been hurt. The worst thing you can do to someone in my family who is upset or sad is to try to be kind to them. You have to call them 'bitch' and try not to hug them or be too nice. Being nice opens the gate for tears to come, and we all hate that. We like that vulnerable stuff to stay inside where it belongs.

But here lately, my inside is all hanging out on the outside.

And that's why I took the effexor.

Odds and Ends:

It seems like 9 times out of 10 when I visit my little fish bowl, I can't see my picture -- just a little placeholder where it ought to be. So what I'm wondering is can anyone else see it? And if not, you should be able to see it if you click on the website link on my profile. It's the portrait in the upper right hand corner of the page. One of these days I'm going to get one of those cool websites where you can click for a high res image of my paintings and really see them well, but for now...well, I'm still kind of a rookie.

And...I'm wondering how many times I'll have to post before that little line on my profile that gives my average weekly posts will read 1 instead of 0. I guess that's what happens when you go an entire year without posting.

Also...still haven't started the Effexor, although I've given it more serious thought these past few days. I think PMS has arrived though, so I'm going to try to wait that out and see if time cures me. I'm still mulling the comment someone posted on here regarding chemicals not being able to change my soul. It does seem like there is, or should be, some fundamental part of ME that is and always will be ME...but what about cases like that guy who got a spike through his head and his entire personality changed afterwards? (Read all about it --> http://www.deakin.edu.au/hbs/GAGEPAGE/) You can't deny that your wiring and your chemicals play a big part in who you are.

Sigh. It's probably just that I don't like to take pills. I don't even like to take an aspirin. I'll walk around all day with a headache until someone makes me take an aspirin, but I always feel so much better after I've had one. And I'm taking two pills for my blood pressure right now already. I hate to add something else to the mix.

I also hate feeling crappy.

Do you think it's possible to just resolve to be happy?

Alright then. I never meant to have one of those chatting about my life kind of blogs...I wanted to tell stories, so even though I probably won't stop pondering about my day to day stuff...here are the stories I'm incubating: The Thanksgiving We Checked Mom Into the Nuthouse, and How Jadyn Became Known as The Virgin and Made Her Karoake Debut All in The Same Night, and The Time PB Gave Himself A Haircut, and The Time Jadyn's Sister Got a Speeding Ticket. Just haven't decided which thing to do first. Suggestions are welcome. Which isn't to say I won't totally disregard them.

So...guess what's in my dresser drawer? The middle one, in the top row.

Give up?

Effexor.

http://www.effexorxr.com/ <-- if you're interested.

It's an anti-depressant. I can start taking it anytime I want.

My family doctor was kind enough to give me a month's worth of samples of the stuff to begin with. First, I put off picking them up for nearly two weeks, and now I've got them tucked into a drawer. On account of I'm still a little nervous about taking them.

And I feel SO much better now already. I've had a really good couple of weeks - moodwise.

But I have met me. I know what I'm like. And I know what these last couple of years have been like. I'm not really up for another slide into the Pit of Despair.

So...do I wait to feel crappy again before I start taking them? Or just take them now to ward off any impending crappiness? And if they work...how do I know it's not just my natural tendency to bounce back?

And what if I become a pod person? What if the highs and lows get smoothed out (suddenly I want to break into my rendition of 'Desperado') and what's left is some good natured thing that's just PRETENDING to be me?

Am I more than the sum of the chemicals swimming about in my brain and body? I hope so because I'm probably going to start taking the damn things.

Soon.

I just haven't decided when.

And then there was The Time the Horse Fell On Me.

Please notice that the title of this story is very explicit in stating that the horse fell ON me, I did not at any time, fall OFF the horse. I just want to be very clear about that right up front. It's an important distinction. Me falling OFF the horse, would be somewhat embarassing, but a horse falling ON me...well that sucked, but it wasn't embarassing.

Here's what happened: First, I think I was born wanting a horse of my own. I had a little plastic toy horse called "Marvo the Mustang" when I was four or five that was pretty cool, but even at that tender age, I knew I wanted the real thing. Every Christmas, I would offer up passionate prayers to God or Santa for a horse of my own, preferrably white. I regularly begged my father for a horse. I made long lists of chores that I would perform with no complaint if only he'd buy me a horse. I made charts and graphs and slide presentations all about why it would be good for me to have a horse. For example, I'd get up at five in the morning EVERY day and feed and brush the horse, and THEN I would clean the ENTIRE house, and THEN I would be so nice to both my sisters (even Gwen), and THEN I would RIDE the horse and this would be exercise, which would cause me to LOSE WEIGHT! My father was very interested in me losing weight, so I thought this would be a clincher, but alas...it wasn't to be. I settled for drawing thousands of pictures of horses, reading every book in the library that had anything to do with horses (Marguerite Henry was my favorite author), and papering my entire bedroom with pictures of horses cut out of magazines.

So I got to be about 34 without ever having a horse of my own. I rode other people's horses as much as possible and actually became a pretty good rider.

And then Kallie bought me a horse.

Oh...bliss! Heaven! Joy! At last, at last!

He was beautiful. His name was Bullwinkle, which I quickly changed to Beau, thinking that Bullwinkle was a dumb name for such a beautiful animal. He was gloriously handsome...chestnut with a flaxen colored mane and tail, and a white stripe on his nose. He was a Tennessee Walker, probably 16 or 17 hands, and probably weighed around 1000 - 1200 lbs. (I mention this because it becomes important later). He was a fairly well-behaved animal, but could be stubborn. The one big downside to Beau was that he was afraid of cars. Didn't want to go anywhere near one. Maybe he'd been forced to sit in a backseat on a long trip with his siblings when he was a foal. I'm not sure what the source of his fear was, but it was extreme, and he had no interest in overcoming it.

I, on the other hand, was very interested in having Beau overcome his fear. We lived on a dirt road in very rural Georgia. People rode their horses up and down the road all the time, and I wanted to ride Beau out there too. I'd had him for about a month and was tired of riding round and round the pasture. Heck, I wanted to show him off. He was gorgeous, and I'm sure I looked gorgeous riding him.

So, on a beautiful spring Sunday afternoon, I took him for a ride on the dirt road.

First, a bit about the dirt roads: there are these deep ditches along the sides of the roads that serve as a place for rain to run off so as not to entirely wash away the road during the frequent summer rains. Periodically, the county would come out and 'pull the ditches' to keep them nice and deep - deep being approximately 2 to 3 feet. As luck would have it, the ditches had very recently been pulled on this Sunday afternoon.

Things were going really well to start. Beau and I had gone about a quarter mile before someone came by on a 4-wheeler. He started to spook, but there was a driveway nearby, and I trotted up into someone's yard until the 4-wheeler got past. I was feeling pretty good about that solution and pretty confident about our ability to safely avoid trouble. And that's when Kallie came to check on me.

In her car.

I trotted Beau back up another driveway when she went by initially, and when she parked off to the side of the road a bit, I rode out of the driveway and got close enough to yell and ask what she was doing, and to be told that she'd come to check on me. Since she was parked there on the side of the road, it seemed like a good idea to try to get Beau used to cars by walking him past a parked one. (As opposed to letting a moving one come zooming past him just in time for him to throw me onto it's hood). So Kallie got into her car and I pointed Beau towards the car and gave him a little kick.

He went about three steps and then turned back around in the opposite direction.

I turned him back toward the car.

He turned back the other way.

We repeated this several times.

Finally, I gave him a little smack on the neck with the reins and tried to turn him back around. (You really can't let a horse think he's the boss of you.) Instead of turning back around, he started to walk backwards. Towards the ditch. Nothing I did got him moving frontwards again, so I tried talking to him, calmly..."Hey, dumbass...if you don't stop backing up, we're both going to wind up in the ditch!". This was absolutely true, but utterly failed to convince Beau to stop backing up.

And then I felt his back legs drop into the ditch and remember very clearly thinking, "Oh shit...this is going to be bad." This was also absolutely true.

As much as Beau hated cars, he evidently felt even worse about ditches, because at that point, he reared up onto his hind legs. (This is the point at which I did NOT fall off). I was hanging in there just fine, and then came this moment when I realized that he had reared so far up, that he was going to go right on over backwards. That was one of those crystalline moments that seemed to last forever, and I had time to think, "Oh shit...this is going to hurt." This was also absolutely true.

And over we went. I hit the ground at the same time Beau hit the ground. He landed with most of his weight on my left leg and while it hurt, I was miraculously unbroken. So far.

As it turns out, horses don't much like lying on the ground with their feet in the air. It freaks them out. So he started trying to get up by heaving his body up and then flopping back down on me. It was during one of those first flops that I felt my wrist break. After a couple of more flops, I started to be genuinely afraid that I was going to get broken to death in that ditch. I looked for Kallie and saw her getting out of her car, and started to say things to her which seemed to make a lot of sense at the time, like, "Help!" and "Get him off of me!"

Unfortunately Kallie couldn't really help me. The horse was on his back flailing with all four legs. If she'd gotten closer, he would have kicked her brains out, so she did the only thing she could. She screamed at the horse, "GET OFF HER!" And amazingly, he did. He gave a last mighty heave and got his legs under him (his right rear hoove landed squared on my inner left thigh -- the bruise wrapped entirely around my leg) and stood up.

What followed was a harrowing ride to the hospital, surgery on my arm, and months to recuperate. I still have a limited range of motion in my right wrist, but I consider myself lucky nonetheless. It could have been worse.

We sold Beau a year later after Kallie got into a similarly serious horse wreck on a different horse. I haven't been on a horse since the accident (mine, not hers), but I think about it a lot. I dream about it. And one day, I'll do it.

You know...I was just thinking this morning that there's something about seeing my girlfriend in a skirt that suddenly turns me into a construction worker. I looked over this morning while we were driving in to work together and noticed that her skirt had ridden up a little bit, showing off a very nice expanse of soft brown thigh, and the next thing I knew, I had a beer belly, a hard....hat (c'mon...what'd you think I was gonna say?), and a throat full of catcalls. I very discreetly kept my mouth shut though and just allowed my mind to wander where the rest of me couldn't. There were, after all, children in the car.

It's funny because I used to really have a thing for butch girls. I liked the gender ambiguity...masculine and feminine blended in suprising ways. And I was a real sucker for that whole 'tough yet vulnerable' thing. I probably still am on some level.

But my girl....not 'tough yet vulnerable', not 'young and troubled' (another of my former weaknesses)....she's intelligent and competent and warm and smells good. If there's some gender ambiguity going on, it's that she's tough and strong in ways that are sometimes thought to be traditionally male, but physically...so female. So what I'm sayin' is....viva la femme and all that...

I've added a picture of myself. It's over there, on the side. That's not Harry Potter (as some have surmised), it's me. And if you view my profile, you'll find a link to my little yahoo website where I have more of my paintings posted.

I got tired of looking at my yellow blog, so now I have this greenish one. I think it looks a little watery (which would be in keeping with the fishbowl theme). Sort of. Ok...maybe foresty.

What? Don't fish grow on trees?

So, I met with Judith yesterday for the first time. Her office sucked (too bright, absolutely nothing on the walls, no personal belongings...no sharp objects), but she seemed nice enough. She is from Israel and has a thick accent. She has dark rimmed glasses and a sympathetic face. First I tried to cram a synopsis of the past two years into my fifty minute session...then I realized that wasn't going to be adequate, so I went back seven years, then finally gave up and condensed my entire life into fifty minutes of disjointed speech.

She nodded alot, but the sympathetic face was nice.

She thinks I could use some drugs and some talking.

Ok...show of hands...who is surprised?

In other news, Nate graduated last weekend. (YAY!) And now he's acquired not one, but TWO jobs. He'll be a busy guy this summer, and maybe he'll save a few bucks.

In other, other news, Jadyn just got a great job offer for a position that promises to be both challenging and lucrative. We are both excited for her.

In other, other, other news, PB learned to swim last night, but seems to be completely unconcerned with getting a job and helping to contribute to the general welfare of our household. Little bum.

Marsha Drucker. Marcy O'Neal. Laura Sage. Carol Dewald. Margie Mortimer. Judith Feinman.

I'm trying to choose a therapist today. These are the names provided to me by my insurance company, and that's basically all I have to go by...just the names. I do know they're all female because that's what I requested, but that's all the information I started with.

Sooo...Marsha is out. Her name is too much like the fabled Marsha Hoppy, Christian Counselor, who didn't want me to be a 'deek'. Is this fair to Marsha Drucker? Not at all. But them's the breaks.

Marcy O'Neal is promising because my therapist in Savannah was Peggy O'Cain. See...another 'O' name, and this time a positive association. So I called Ms. O'Neal's office and asked the receptionist if Ms. O'Neal was going to be comfortable treating a big ol' deek, and the stammering that ensued directly resulted in my hanging up as soon as she put me on hold.

Ok. On down the list to Laura Sage. Now, that's a wise sounding name. Sure to be full of 'sage' advice. I got her answering machine though and something in her voice rubbed me the wrong way. I don't even know what. So scratch the Sage.

Carol Dewald works at a geriatric facility. They don't see anyone under fifty. I'm barely out of my twenties. ahem.

Margie Mortimer? Are they kidding? That's a cartoon name.

This leaves us with Judith Feinman. She works for 'University Mental Health blah blah'. That's good. University Hospital is where I had my baby. I trust them. And Judith is a nice sturdy name. She'll probably have met and worked with plenty of deeks. I'm waiting for her office to call me back and give me an appointment.

Why therapy? Good question. Here's why: Because I am very regularly being overwhelmed by my emotions. Every rainshower becomes a tornado. Disappointments feel like major heartbreak. Irritation feels like grinding rage. Unfortunately, happiness doesn't necessarily translate to orgasmic euphoria...but wouldn't that be nice? Distracting, but nice.

So something has to be done. This is not good for me, not good for my relationship with Jayden, not good for my relationship with Nate (can you imagine what mother guilt turns into under these circumstances?), and not good for my performance at work.

I am not suicidal. I don't think I have that kind of personality, or whatever...but sometimes I feel like I just want to die. And I don't say that out loud because it sounds like drama queen talk. So...for anyone who thinks I'm a drama queen anyway...evidence that it isn't as bad as it could be.

So what I'm thinking is that life is too short to spend so much of it unhappy -- especially when it's me making me that way. For whatever reason. And maybe it's a chemical thing. I think for the first time that I might be ready to try an anti-depressant. Generally, I think we as a society are over-medicated, and I hate to take medicines...but...you know...something's gotta be done. Maybe it's time to bite the bullet. It's just scary because I've known a couple of people who have had a really hard time getting off of them. And if the meds take away the stunning lows, will I lose the dazzling highs as well? And if chemicals are regulating my emotions...will I still be me? Will I really be happier, or just sort of levelled out?

I want to still be me. Just happier. Easier to live with. More 'with it'.

My intention at this point is to start writing here more regularly. And I'll let you know how the therapy works out.