Snow Days

I got my first snow day (snow evening) the other night for the first time since maybe the mid-'90s when I was busy overachieving in high school and was probably BUMMED that school was canceled since I am sure I had stayed up all night working on End Hunger posters and gah! now I won't be able to hand in my Beowulf essay or hang up the posters OR put up my new pro-life bumper stickers on my locker FOR THE LOVE OF PETE. But best believe I was enjoying this snow night, even if we had been a little cagey all couped up inside for the past few. Baby Girl and I made our own fun and beheld the winter wonder of Boston when it tries to capacitate 8 inches of snow with a colonial sewage system. Oosh.

Hallways and Snowdays are for obstacle courses.

Beware

A couple of weeks ago, I was in the bathroom having an intervention appointment with Mary Kay who was working her magic on me with a little thing called showing free radicals who's boss microdermabrasion, and busy though I was with the pink lady products [which you can purchase and have shipped to you for free through my website linked above under the "mary kay" tab, not that I am plugging shamelessly or anything, not that I want a Pink Cadillac today or anything], I suddenly heard a loud THUD and I was sure Baby Girl was taking her first Danger Mouse geronomooooo out of her crib. But I came out of the bathroom to near no crying, to see Lovey sitting on the exerball just casually thinking maybe the sound came from the stairwell that leads to the other units in our building. But further inspection suggested that perhaps it came from outside. Still, we had no leads. When I was gone to the funeral last week, Lovey called me and said, "Hey, remember that loud THUD the other night? Well, I found scraps of a coconut in the wreath on the front door."

I will not even begin to explore who purposefully carried a coconut in the mid-February freeze to play darts at my stoop.

So a word from the 'hood. Beware of coconut cannonballs aiming for the target of the festive wreath on your front door. We just can't be too careful about the hazards of tropical fruit.

Winter of [My] Discontent

How I wish I were posting about my reenactment of Buddy the Elf's Victory Lap 'round the Revolving Door. But lately I just cannot seem to shake these low spirits. I have been living with seasonal affective disorder from roughly September to March every year for at least the last ten years. I've read a good bit about it and met with a couple of counselors. I've learned to recognize the symptoms (e.g. persistent cravings for comfort foods that last for weeks, lack of enthusiasm for leaving the house, feeling of overwhelm in dealing with the simplest of tasks and then allowing them all to snowball so that become completely snowed in to own misery) and to deal with them head-on. In the past, sometimes that has meant a low-dose anti-depressant. In other years, I have just stuck to my light treatments. This year has been a bit more complicated since I am still nursing and therefore don't want to go on the meds, but at the same time, I cannot physically be faithful to my light treatments. My days are spent keeping a curious and active almost-toddler cordoned off. It is nearly impossible to sit in front of my sun lamp for more than five minutes before I am rushing to keep the pages of a carelessly placed novel from passing through the Baby Girl Shredder. Yesterday I was pressing my nose up against my sunlamp as if hooked up to an IV of serotonin drip. I was half of a mind to climb inside the sunlamp as if it were a tanning bed and sunbathe myself into oblivion. If I am really honest, I am not feeling much better today, but ironically, being around the baby has helped to keep me focused and to live and enjoy the preciously fleeting moments of her babydom. I could surely use some prayers in the interim of figuring out my treatment plan.