take a walk on the mild side
SEMI-LENGTHY SILENCE, SEMI-EXPLAINED
1. A mysterious revulsion at the very idea of communicating (and thus shaping) my thoughts. A desire for a return to some mute shadowy realm of Platonic forms.
2. BRB: need to chain-refresh Twitter and reddit following all the holy-shit breaking news.
3. Legit busy. Never-ending work project (the worst MIGHT be over by JULY), kid has a billion things going on, meetups with friends, the usual feeding and shopping and laundry.
4. So many books! I read this crazy (translated from French!) history/anthropology thing about bears, which made me want to be a medieval duke with my own bestiary, I read the biography of DFW, which led to a lot of strange/sad musings about the construction of a personality and how it differs from the construction of a self, and I got super-excited to learn that we get a new Margaret Atwood in September.
5. Speaking of stuff to read, here is an article about Tori Amos and professional wrestler Mick Foley.
6. Chicago’s never-ending rain could manage to depress even the most diehard denier of the pathetic fallacy. Since it doesn’t look like we are getting spring, I will just get ready for summer. Chicago summer as described by Benjamin Hale (The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore, which you should totally read):
It should be noted, however, that during the summers Chicago for some reason elects to discharge a battery of fireworks into the sky from Navy Pier every single Friday and Saturday night, and thus Chicago is a city spoiled rotten with fireworks, like a silly child who eats her favorite food every day until she loses the taste for it. So on the Fourth of July they compensate simply by shooting off lots and lots of fireworks!—which is admittedly an uncreative solution to the problem of pyrotechnic desensitization that arises from that city’s powerful thirst, her loving greed to smell the sulfur in her nose and to hear these ballistic hosannas and to see these wildflowers of energy blooming in the sky and reflected on the surface of her lake. I have said earlier that Chicago is curmudgeonly in the winters. Yes, but in the summers—perhaps, in fact, in order to amend for her frigid behavior most of the year—in the summers Chicago is no longer Chicago-that-somber-city, but instead is a wild rich child of a city, who demands to eat her cake and ice cream every single day—and the weakhearted people of the city give it to her, they give it all to her because they love her, they spoil her, just because, even if she doesn’t deserve it, they love to see the beautiful look on her face when she gets what she wants.
But in the meantime: rain! Flash floods! Yo, check it: this happened!
I worked from home the day of the worst rain (although it’s been raining for approximately 79 weeks now) (approximation based on Emotional Time©), because I had the headshrinker appointment (finally, right?) It seems to me that we are doing this a bit backwards—it was suggested that I see the medication lady first and she would refer me to a therapist—but maybe I am just a secret hippie. Anyway, the psychiatrist did her thing and ended up recommending a very small, practically placebo-level dosage of an antidepressant, and also handed me a ‘scrip for something in the benzodiazepine family. That was kind of a surprise. I am an adult and not particularly drug-seeking (these days) but whoa, hey, rather free with mommy’s little helper there, no? Then again, I am pretty textbook with the panic and the whole staying-up-all-night-chewing-on-my-brain thing, so perhaps I should assume she knows what she is doing.
Brief communication snafu when LT asked via text how the appointment went.
Me: okay. Prescribed some meds and referred for CBT.
LT: I don’t recommend that at all, I personally think that’s a bad idea
Me: Huh?
LT: oh wait, maybe CBT doesn’t stand for “cock and ball torture” in this context
Or DOES IT? I don’t know exactly how cock and ball torture could be therapeutic for me, but I am keeping an open mind until the appointment.
My parents are out of town so I had to drive like a wet bat out of a very flooded hell right from the appointment to pick up Nora at school, instead of walking from home like I normally would. On the way home there were cops and standing water everywhere, traffic was ridiculous, and I could not tell until I crept up to the intersection that the police had blocked off pretty much the very street I need to get to my house. Thus began a long and tortuous detour while Nora made “helpful” navigational and deep-water driving suggestions from the back seat. OH MY GOD SHUT UP. Hey, maybe I will take one of those benzos now, thanks a lot.
Last thing. We live in an amazing time. It is often a very upsetting time, and often I want nothing more than to yell OH FUCK THIS, go back to bed, and wake up in the Middle Ages with nothing to worry about but plague and famine and ancient pagan bear cults.
But then there are the times when you realize that you can be in your pajamas with a cup of tea, cozy in your own home in front of your own computer monitor, and watch a Canadian astronaut (who looks like he really should be a New Jersey firefighter) wring out a washcloth in space. That should make you glad enough to live in crazy internet world. Add a few kitten videos and you’ll be all set.
—mimi smartypants, space oddity.