the eternal child

Caught in a downpour yesterday. Puddle-stomping never gets old.

my own private spa

So yes, I feel fairly certain it's sun poisoning. My skin is all clear-blistered and disgusting, and hurts like hot pokers. The color now resembles the center of a very rare steak. A living steak, in fact. And I've been feeling sick to my stomach and intestines all day. I almost threw up from the pain this morning when I eased into my shirt.

So I did a few things at work, looked totally pathetic and garnered lots of sympathy (I really do look like a slab of fried salt pork) and came home early to soothe my terrible pains in a rare luxury that I remember from a bout with the chicken pox when I was five years old:

The oatmeal bath.

I've told a few people about this amazing ritual, and they've looked at me as though I were from a far-off planet or had suddenly sprouted an extra, babbling head. But I tell you, it's the most soothing experience you'll ever have in your bathtub, and it's so incredibly cheap.

Steps to Oatmealed Bliss:

1. Find an old sock, preferably on the large/long side. You know, one of the ones that keep getting divorced from their mates in the dryer. They deserve a sticky fate anyway, the jerks.

2. Fill the sock halfway to three-quarters of the way with dry plain oatmeal. (Soooo cheap.) Knot the sock at the top (a very simple knot will do).

3. Place the sock in the tub and start the water. For best results, keep the sock under the running water.

4. Adjust the water temperature as necessary. (For a cold winter's day, a hot bath; or for a hot summer's day, or a terrible sunburn, something nice and lukewarm.)

5. Soak in the lovely smooth glutinous oatmeal water. Squeeze the oatmeal sock over the worst burns for an almost instantaneous soothing.

I'm still experimenting with whether it's best to rinse off, or just towel dry. But do make sure to at least pat the burns dry; letting them air-dry without being rinsed just causes the oatmeal glue to dry and crack, which is (hello!) painful -- as I've just discovered.

And when you're done, just squeeze the oatmeal down to the bottom of the sock, unknot it and turn it inside out, discard the oatmeal, and rinse the sock. Voile!

And anyway, an oatmeal bath is such fun ("'amusing' or 'diverting' darling, never 'such fun'") and it's the only 20 minutes I spent pain and nausea free today.

Vive l'oatmeal!

a burnt offering to Ra

Yesterday I headed up a car wash that a former Center resident hosted at her place of employment. And spent four and a half hours on asphalt during the most sun-intensive hours of a day that was within one degree of being the hottest for its date in sixty years of South Bend history.

Without sunscreen.

You idiot! you say. Yup. I don't currently even own sunscreen; ordinarily I spend so little time in the sun preserving my ivory pallor that I don't need it. And yesterday I paid for it. And last night. And this morning. And right now.

My shoulders are on FIRE. Yesterday when I left the parking lot I smelled faintly of bacon, from my own skin cooking in the UV rays. I had trouble sleeping last night; the pain kept waking me up. I've felt faintly nauseous.

Now, if I don't die of sun poisoning (which I strongly doubt I will), in a few days I'll have a gorgeous base tan. Currently, however, my ponytailed hair where it touches the back of my neck feels as warm as though it spent time in the microwave.

I'm like a space heater of strawberry-ice-cream-colored skin.

at last

God bless the clinics who serve the low-income and badly insured of our nation. And God bless no-nonsense doctors who don't treat you like an idiot.

So the doctor who saw me this morning was first of all really old, second of all very complimentary as to my personhood -- intellect, appearance, and clean-cut lifestyle (can you believe it?) -- and thirdly supportive of my request for antidepressants. I even got samples!

So now begins my medicated quest for a mentally stable existence.

And the nurse who saw me to the exam room was extremely friendly and gave me her phone number and wants to be my friend.

This week has been totally bizarre.

And, despite 10.5 hours of sleep yesterday, today still finds me groggy and exhausted. But hopefully that will all be over soon.

Hallelu Yah.

soon (hopefully)

So I've been falling apart. The teller is that nothing should really be that wrong, aside from the usual loneliness. My life is great.

It's just this chemical imbalance in my brain and body that's causing me to absorb too much seratonin, making it impossible for me to pull myself up by my bootstraps. I need medication.

Laura has this great analogy that she told me on Sunday: Taking antidepressants is like wearing glasses. It's correcting an imbalance that you were born with, that you cannot do anything about.

Anyway, I'm all about antidepressants (I was on them three years ago), and after trying multiple avenues today -- calling different doctors and organizations -- and running up against a wall each time, I finally fell back on my family practice (that I've only been to once...another thing that sucks about relocating to a totally new area is having no idea where to go for medical needs) and told the receptionist that while it's more common for a family physician to refer a patient to psychiatric care, no one can take me until the end of the summer and I really need help now.

So I have an appointment on Friday morning.

Here's hoping.

too much

I finally got ahold of the psychiatrist's office recommended to me. And they are taking new patients...but they can't get me in until August. And they had no referrals for anyone taking patients any earlier.

So, on the one hand, yay, I'll get help. On the other hand, crap, August is a long way away. (Explain to me how this makes sense. Crazy person calls doctor and says, I need help. Doctor says, Great! We'll see you in three months. I mean, Crazy Person needs help NOW. What is Crazy Person supposed to do in the meantime?)

Getting through the day is hard. I have a depleted will, drive, and capability to do anything taxing. It's hard enough dragging myself through the routines of my day. And I'm terrified that I'm going to start sucking at my job. And I hate, I hate that my joy in what I do and believe in just isn't there.

So. There's that. There's the fact that I'm exhausted and my eyes hurt from the one-day trip to PA and back this week. There's the fact that I'm driving back to PA this weekend (which I'm happy to do; it's my sister's graduation, hooray for her!!).

And there's the fact that I can only do so much for myself. I'm trying to cope. It's difficult.

My favorite ways of dealing with depression:

1. Spend as much time with people as possible, or as little, depending on my need and mood.

2. Watch a lot of soothing movies that just make me happy when I have to be alone. For example: Monsters, Inc.; Spirited Away; Lilo & Stitch; 10 Things I Hate about You; My Neighbor Totoro. Yes, heavy on the Disney and Miyazaki. Miyazaki in particular is pure joy.

3. Take it easy on myself when possible. I haven't cleaned my apartment thoroughly in a couple of weeks. I just can't. I'll have to make myself eventually; but for now, I'm just letting it be. (I cleaned the bathroom last night, and swept the floors. That's a good start.)

4. Do something radically out of character that is also good for me. This time around I'm training for a triathlon in July. The exercise is amazingly good for my mood, and it's toning muscles and making me feel better about my health and appearance. Plus it's something I've never done before, which makes me feel like I'm being proactive in doing something new and beneficial, and it has no negative triggers for me.

5. Take ruthless advantage of the "self check-out" lines in the grocery stores, when I have to go foraging for food and don't want to interact with strangers.

6. Oh yes, this is my favorite: Buy and read a lot of trashy romance novels. I did this all through college (and in a fit of guilt kept throwing them away), but they're all so ridiculous and predictable and end happily, and it's good escapism.

7. Write. I've been picking through old stories on my GCC laptop, and thinking about taking up an old writing project. It channels me somewhere else for awhile, where all my experiences have artistic meaning, which makes up for the fact that without the completed picture which I can't know, my experiences lack existential meaning.

Sigh. I need a vacation.

pupdate

Huzzah, Duke is spending MUCH less time outside...so much less that I feared for half the morning yesterday that he'd been confiscated. But then I heard his energetic barking as he spent a pleasant, sunny hour out of doors around noon.

Better yet, I talked about it with Slightly Psycho Kevin yesterday, and he said that last week he spoke with the neighbors and in his nice-on-the-outside-but-watch-out way told them that if they didn't look after their dog better, someone was going to have to make the call to Animal Control. So unless he rats me out (you never know with SPK), they probably think he did it.

Now of course if they were to ask me if I made the phone call, I'd own up to it. I did it for a reason. But in the meantime it's nice to think I can still probably take him for walks without them hating me.

The saga of the dog a door down

Sometime in December or January my next-door neighbors got a dog.

Allow me to say that this is possibly the cutest dog I have ever seen. Thanks to a self-absorbed horror of a Doberman who followed hard and badly on the heels of my childhood's Perfect Dog, I thought I hated the species. This adorable youngster made me realize otherwise. We fell completely in love, through the fence -- like Pyramus and Thisbe.

His name, I learned from the neighbors, is Duke -- a dumb name, but you can't have everything. (I'd have named him Brutus.) Duke is a Chow-German shepherd mix, with a shepherd's build and short coarse coat, a chow's head and black tongue, a shepherd's patterning on the head, and a chow's reddish coloring. His large triangular ears stand perkily alert and his head, usually cocked to the side, and intelligent fun-filled eyes give him a rascally look.

At first I was cautious about him -- he barks ferociously at every passerby through the chain-link fence that holds him in his dirt yard -- but one day as I shut the door of my car in the driveway (which I share with Duke's owners) I noticed his tail waving. So I approached him, and he jumped eagerly to brace his front paws on the fence, and we introduced ourselves.

After that we established a routine -- I go over to pet him and say hi every time I come home. Then I started taking him for an occasional walk, which brought him massive amounts of joy, and brought me massive amounts of muscle aches the next day because he's so young and eager and pulls so hard on the leash. (He's only ten months old. Just a puppy.) And eventually he was happier to see me than he was to see his owners. We arrived home from work at the same time one day, and both approached the fence...and Duke came dashing over to me. I was a little embarrassed, a little happy.

But all these months I've been troubled by the way he's kept. Obviously he's not ill-treated in any emotional way -- he's the happiest, most outgoing, loving dog on the planet. But through the harsh days of South Bend's winter, snow, ice, and wind; and through the hot days of early spring; and through the past two weeks of frigid rain, he's always outside. And he has no shelter. The neighbors put him outside and leave all day for work, while Duke sits huddled miserably as close to the house as he can get. He has no doghouse, no access to the garage. And when the weather got legitimately hot a few weeks ago, he had no water. His food is usually dumped on the ground. His only toys are sections of a chewed-up garden hose.

I've been struggling internally with the right course of action for a long time. When I began taking an active interest in the dog, such as walking him, I noticed that he stopped being left outside all night, like he used to. But even so, he's outside from 8-12 hours every day, with no way of getting out of the weather. I asked around and learned that it's the law to provide your dog with a shelter raised off the ground if it spends the majority of its time outside. I bought a bucket and filled it with water to put inside the yard for him (and all the while he drank -- thirstily -- he watched me and waved his tail), hoping the neighbors would take the hint, but instead they took away the bucket.

This week was the last straw. The weather has been in the upper thirties and lower forties, and pouring down rain for the past four days. And through it all this poor dog has been sitting outside. It made me mad. So I called Animal Control to report it.

I didn't term the case anything at all; I just said to the woman who answered the phone that I needed to talk to someone about my neighbors' dog, who spent most of his time outdoors in all weather without shelter or water. She said, "You need to give us the address, ma'am: That's a neglect case, and a priority call." So I complied and requested to be kept informed: "If he winds up being taken away, I'd like to help find a good home for him. I'm really attached to this dog." She took my number and said she'd do what she could; it wasn't standard procedure. She also said they'd send someone out right away.

And they did. About an hour later I saw the Animal Control van parked outside the house. No one was home, but Duke was in the yard as described, and as I left to go grocery shopping (yes, I finally did that, too), I saw an official-looking paper stuck in their door.

So they've got their warning informing them of what legally they're required to do. I assume they'll have an eye kept on them.

I don't want them to take the dog away. I want him to be treated well, and I want to keep taking him for walks. If I could take this dog myself, I certainly would. But if it takes him getting a new and better home, that's fine.

I don't particularly like the sensation of ratting on my neighbors -- that's why I've been silent so long -- but I can't stand seeing him cold and miserable and huddled in a little ball when it's cold and wet, or collapsed in the shade panting without a drink when it's hot. So I did something about it. And maybe now things will change a bit for him. I notice that he's not outside at all this cold wet afternoon.

you gotta open up your heart

Yeah, I'm not all that okay.

Hence the lack of blogging -- everything seems lackluster. I have no motivation to do anything that I usually enjoy doing -- reading, writing, blogging, cleaning, watering my plants. I lagged behind in my bills this month (something I've gotten meticulously out of the habit of doing). I haven't done laundry in forever. I hate being alone in my apartment. I'm grumpy with my cat. I'm not sleeping well. I'm gaining weight. I feel a general sense of tired, hollow sadness. I long to spend a lot of time with people I know, but I'm ashamed to talk about what's going on in me, this relentless feeling of ill-being and an inability to function at the higher levels. And I'm terrified of being with people I don't know. Last night I was supposed to go to a dinner for work, but at the last minute I had to go by myself, and I freaked out and started crying. (My boss kindly excused me from going. I felt like a heel.) I haven't gone grocery shopping in two weeks because I can't face the thought of being in company with so many strangers at the store.

This is not like me in the least. Some of my coworkers are a little surprised -- "But you're so outgoing," said Jess. I know. This isn't me. This is horrible. And I don't know what triggered this tailspin, so I need to talk to someone who can a.) figure me out and b.) give me medicine to mitigate the effects of depression.

So it's going to get fixed. I will not live like this any longer. I need help. My boss gave me the number of a reputable psychiatrist, and I'm waiting for a call from them today to set up a new patient interview.

This sucks. But something's gotta give -- and I've been here before, and I know it gets better. With help, it gets better.

The good thing about my morning was that I got to share a little excitement about the Psalms with a resident (we call them guests) at the Center who is just starting to read the Bible. And it was fantastic to remember that the Word of God does not return to him empty, and that other people are touched by it, too.

what I'm looking for

I know the posting has been spotty...this great, heavy, soggy apathy has been smothering my desire to communicate, even as it enhances my sense of isolation. Lovely, yes? Oh -- no.

So, in a comment on the Fab Females blog, I one day, off the cuff, spelled out what I'm looking for in a man. It struck me today as a pretty incredible description, all the more so because I know someone who fits that bill. Despite the fact that he is somewhat unavailable (for the time being, anyway), the fact that this man actually exists bodily in the world I live in gives me tremendous amounts of encouragement and hope.

Here he is in a nutshell:

The man I'm looking for is a man of God, dedicated to truth and justice, who treats others the way Christ treated others, who hates hypocrisy, and who knows the clear, hard, just, and merciful nature of love. Who knows his purpose and strives to live toward it. Who loves equally the successful businessperson and the homeless derelict. Who treats all human beings, including his family, with dignity and respect. Who pursues his goals with unshaken focus and seeks to live an effective life in our broken world.

Yup. I have met a person like this. He's not too good to be true. (And this is in no way intended to slam any of the guys I know. I love almost all of you.) He also has a hot temper and the (at least as far as I've observed) unheard-of ability to live in a bad day without somehow involving you in its badness. Add innate confidence, a well-rounded sense of humor, a love of literature, aesthetic taste, and a feel for good irony, and you've got him.

In short, I think he's great. Available or unavailable, for now or ever, notwithstanding. He fuels my hope for a good future.

Wild.