Tag Archives: mental illness

Salad Forks and Knitting Needles

21 Thursday Oct 2021

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Today I was a very little dismayed when a guy I’ll call Troy came in to the place I work. (I’m a certified peer specialist, and I help run a small group of recovery learning centers, where people who’ve experienced mental health diagnoses come to hang out. We peers also have lived experience, and we’re trained . . . differently than your average Mental Health Professional.)

Troy has something called word salad, in which his language gets garbled. People with this are in a way sort of like having killer mega ADD, in which they distract themselves second by second: Sentences merge into other sentences, words interweave with their cousins and their sisters and their aunts, and the result is that the simplest attempt at conversation is about as linear as a plate of spaghetti. It’s Ulysses in a blender.  

I have a really beautiful verbal processor for my native tongue, and so I find talking with Troy to be fascinating. But I just realized that the dismay came from old memories of what talking to Troy felt like. See, it makes my processor work very hard, and it’s not used to that as a rule! Not since grad school, in fact. I’m a weekend jogger who just ran a half-marathon. So the net result is that I’m exhausted now and my brain feels sorry for itself, unsure of any logical connection and unwilling to make decisions.

(“Ooh, I know! Let’s attempt to write something now and put it up on the Interwebs!”)

Troy hadn’t seen me for several years, and approved of my weight loss in the most straightforward fashion, approaching me with hopeful hands outstretched and asking if he could embrace my thigh so as to appreciate how much was just loose flesh. I told him that wasn’t happening, and he then offered me the same privilege, so I could tell him what the difference was. No dice there, either, but it did occur to me that it was just as well my co-workers were just a holler down the hall—just in case.

But Troy was just testing boundaries, which I’m used to from our community members, and we went out with his coffee and my knitting. (I don’t go anywhere without my knitting if I think I’ll have to sit still for more than five minutes.) So Troy talked to me, and I tried to follow along, with him having me repeat back verbatim what had come out of his mouth, and both of us laughing: Whatever I had heard had not been the impulse of Troy’s brain; it’s unsurprising that sometimes he talks of himself as only borrowing Troy’s body.

Luckily, I had my knitting, in which I make things out of sheep fur, imposing order onto the chaotic universe. It calms me down and centers me—some people smoke, but I knit. No great shakes—we’re talking an average of a sock a month—but it anchors me, and lets me focus on things like talking to Troy, and sometimes the much harder task of talking to myself.

“It’s OK,” I said fairly early on. But he transfixed me with a sharp-nailed fingershake.

“It’s not OK,” he declared. And I felt like an ass: How would I feel if my brain pulled that sheep on me? Not OK, that’s how. But Troy carries it with an abundant sense of humor, and what I must call grace, meaning both a rough sort of etiquette and what some would call a gift from God.

Troy called my attention to the embarrassing fact that I say, “It’s OK” a lot. I hadn’t ever thought about it before, but I seem to have a pattern of needing to reassure people, possibly because my trauma survivor brain sees the world as a dark and scary place.

Hmm. That’s not OK.

Panic and Anxiety

13 Friday Mar 2020

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I’m on Xanax. Been on Xanax for a while now. It helps me sleep, so I take one at night with the rest of the handful in my cocktail. Every so often I have a random panic attack, and I take one then. Soldiering on, so it goes, etc. But yesterday was different.

See, my generalized anxiety disorder tends to not get triggered at work, because I’m too busy to live in my head. But yesterday felt like a movie. You know what I mean, I betcha, because you’re starring in one too. It’s the Doomsday movie with the mysterious virus which decimates the human population.

Because talking about our feelings is not only OK but encouraged at staff meeting (I’m a peer specialist), I admitted to feeling just plain scared–of what, I don’t know. And others agreed. As the day wore on, and we poured ourselves out upon the two or three people who made it in, it was hard not to notice the deserted halls. Panic hung in the air like an impending thunderstorm, with the same sense of pressure on the soul.

The coup de grace came when our director came in and announced that as of Monday, we would be closed until further notice. The phone support line folks can come in, but not those of us who do face time. Instead, my boss and I will spend some quality time doing some overdue things like writing an employee manual. Hi-ho. I’m trying to look at this as a weird Lenten vacation, sort of like Spring Break, only without the cheerfulness.

This is not the first pandemic H. sapiens has endured, and it won’t be the last. 9/11 showed us how cohesive our society is, and so far the 1918 Spanish flu makes this viral reaper look like a pitiful tryhard. So have some faith, beloveds. My hope is that the survivors take some lessons to heart, primarily that once expressed by the old saw “Man proposes; God disposes.” I expect to be one of the survivors, but I’m high risk, so time will tell. We are now all on an adventure; I am hoping the treasure at the end is an increased mutual trust and compassion.

Which is all very well, but my anxiety level is through the roof. (It didn’t help the bing-bing-bing that I was out of my ADHD meds yesterday.) So I have messaged my shrink like a good girl, and I am about to start applying all the non-allopathic tools I’ve assembled: Meditation, art, writing, breathing (I was probably on the edge of hyperventilating yesterday from all that deep oxygen intake), listening to music, and *sigh* processing my feelings.

Which sucks as a general thing, but fear is an old, old friend.

Colossal Lack of Insight! Film at 11!

13 Wednesday Dec 2017

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For the past couple of months, I’ve been getting the looming feeling that Something Big was about to happen. I was going to (moan) Grow. I’m not given to premonitions–historically, I’ve made most of the decisions in my life in the split second before they came out of my mouth, surprising myself well over half the time. (Work in progress, folks. Medication helps.) So I started to worry that something weird and horrible was going to happen.  Didn’t think it was the upcoming surgery. Then the thing just did, and I didn’t even realize it until a few minutes ago.

Yesterday I went to my shrink of the past seven years, and she told me she’d gotten a well-deserved promotion and was stepping away from clinical practice. Translation: I’m getting the boot. I have a couple more sessions; she suggested enthusiastically that she be the one to talk to the bariatric people; and then I take a two-month hiatus. I’m going to need all the support I get post-surgery, and I know that, even if I’m not anticipating the psychotic break some previously-blogged-about hospitals did. So I will be starting off with somebody new.

I said something about my premonition, and said in all seriousness that I would want to continue talk therapy when it hit. I said this with absolutely no self-awareness that THIS was it; that it already had hit. I mean, duh? This thought just wandered into my brain 22 hours later.

I owe a lot to this woman. Speaking broadly and with political incorrectness, I was still crazy when I got to her, and now I’m not crazy anymore. When you’re starting off with more than one major psychiatric disorder, that is huge. The process wasn’t as emotional as my previous therapy had been–you know the sort, where I ended up a small child coloring while sitting on the floor, therapist down there with me–but little by bit, she helped me tease out about a million little things, and my life became less chaotic. We did a lot of good work, and I am a happier and much more productive person for it.

In the novel of my life, a chapter (or a story arc) is ending. Something Big, indeed.

(But what was up with the premonition? Are they going to keep happening now? Noooo!)

The Adventure Continues

02 Saturday Dec 2017

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Sorry to have been AWOL for so long, but between Inktober (which I didn’t do very well on) and NaNoWriMo (squeaked by), my creative energies have been sucked dry. In fact, in the interest of full disclosure, I’m making this post because all I need to do is tell what happened, not pull it Athena-like out of my forehead.

Last post: I finally decided to go for bariatric surgery, and joined the program at Beth Israel, where I had my knees replaced last year. I ended with being about to join the new patient group.

Well, no, bunkies. That didn’t happen.

Instead, I got a call a couple of days beforehand from a social worker who wanted me to come in to talk about my *chord of ominous music* Mental Health. So I get there, and am told that my diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder scared the bejeebers out of their staff. My favorite line from this interview was the lady saying, “As it is, we have patients say they feel like an entirely different person afterwards.” (This sort of thing has nothing whatsoever to do with the alters experienced in DID.) In vain did I try to educate her, both about DID in general (spectrum disorder; not often as dramatic as Sybil) and my case in particular (well-controlled thanks to excellent therapy; don’t dissociate anymore). She managed somehow to combine “Sympathetic and on your side” with “Boy howdy, ain’t you the freak!” She claimed they’d never had a DID patient. (Well, if you don’t let them into your program . . .)

They kicked me out of the program. She told me (with the tiniest sneer) that there were over 30 programs in the city. I said, “Yeah, but my insurance sent me here.” She gave a cryptic little smile and suggested I call them back. Sheep you, honey.

Happily, said insurance covered the programs at the other huge local hospitals, so I steeled myself for a round of phone calls. I started out with Boston Medical Center, because I happen to work for them. I am a Certified Peer Specialist, which means I’m professionally qualified to deal with my fellow mentally ill and to be a Shining Example of Recovery. In other words, they hired me because I’m crazy, so I figured they’d have their nerve turning me down for the same reason, right?

I call and get the coordinator. I gave her the two sentence version of the BI story and said, “So BI thinks I’m too crazy to cut. What about you guys?” In an impassive voice, she replied, “We take everybody. Come on in and talk to the surgeon.”

Well now! I watch what by now is the third informational video, and pick the surgeon who seems most sympatico. I went in and talked to this very nice man, who has operated on people who were unrecovered schizophrenics. (Even really crazy people deserve medical care, folks.) The worst news I got from him is that my GERD means he sorta leans toward the RNY gastric bypass instead of the gastric sleeve, which is the procedure I want.

He had heard my story about Beth Israel and their weirdly creepy head surgeon before.

So why did this happen? Because what BI’s bariatric program is doing is called cherry-picking their data. This means that by refusing to treat people they fear may have less than picture-perfect outcomes, their end data looks amazing. They claim they’re the best program in the area, when all they are is a pack of hyenas who share the same level of accreditation with hospitals which actually (be still my overweight heart) heal the sick.

 

 

Doh! I hate that feeling!

05 Friday May 2017

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Twice now, it’s happened. I’m reading along in my current piece, looking for typos and generic stupidity, and I get to the end. I pause for an uncertain second, and then I try to scroll down, to read what happens next. Only I haven’t written it.  As things stand, there is no “happens next.”

This leaves me with a confusion of dismay and a sense of having stumbled into the strangest of responsibilities. Oh no! It’s my job to figure that out! How the sheep did that happen?

The first time this occurred, I wrote it off as some amusing random brain event, sort of a backwards déjà vu. But now I’m not so sure.

Is it a deeper me calling to myself as Writer, asking questions I could only hear from myself?

Or should I consult a neurologist?

Tears, Idle Tears

05 Monday Dec 2016

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I know not what they mean,

Tears from the depth of some divine despair.

Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, . . .

Listening to k.d. lang’s version of “Hallelujah” at the Canadian winter Olympics and crying my eyes out. No surprise. Loreena McKennit’s “Lady of Shalott” does the same thing to me. The Tennyson version, yep. LOTS of Tennyson (quoted above, ironically), which in this modern day and foreign country is supposed to show my bad taste in poetry.

My YouTube channel is in my blog roll; go there and you’ll see other things that made my fat little chin quiver uncontrollably. (The Marines lip-synching “Hold it Against Me”? Oh hell yeah!) The Muppets singing “Bohemian Rhapsody” probably holds the gold, though. And I don’t feel too bad about “Where the Hell is Matt?” because it does it to at least one of my friends as well.

Times I have cried in my current therapist’s office in the last seven or eight years: 1. I don’t understand this. Strangely, I used to cry at the therapist all the time. Then I found the one who (for lack of a better word) cured me, and after she left–not so much. I have a more collegial relationship with my current therapist, working in mental health as I do. Maybe that’s it–although I’ve cried in front of colleagues. We showed The Pursuit of Happyness at my center one day. I was a soggy tissue basket case. People were polite and did not notice, but I felt kind of stupidly naked.

Indeed, Lord Tennyson, I know not what they mean. Did you?

There are three different types of tears: basal (lubrication), reflex (onions), and psychic (Tennyson). Also known as stress tears, these last release leucine enkephalin, a neurotransmitter and painkiller. Maybe my crying fixation is similar to a bulimic’s vomiting–I feel cleaned out and better after a good cry. (Good cry is defined as one that I don’t try to choke off and which happens by myself–my family knows all about this peculiarity, but it’s still embarrassing.) I have long lashes, and when sodden with saline, every blink deposits a tiny drop on the inner surface of my glasses, like snowy flyspecks. I feel a minor shame and an infinitesimal bit of anger when I clean them off: They are evidence of a behavior I do not understand.

What interests me and confuses me most about my tears is that they are usually evoked by the profoundly beautiful. I remember choking up at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on a school trip in high school. And let’s not forget perhaps the high point of this: The time I tried to explain it.

It was during that big pre-qualifying exam crunch read in grad school, so I was already under even MORE stress. My (now ex-)husband came into our bedroom and found me sobbing hysterically. I jabbed a finger at Keats’ Ode on a Grecian Urn, and blubbered, “All the little people have left the town, and they’re never coming ba-ack!” Amused, my scientist said, “Yes, dear. Would you like some coffee?”–this being the only possible logical response. Damn thing still makes me cry.

I can’t read moving poetry aloud. Sometimes in choir I have to make my mind a blank while we sing certain passages; I think music is what makes me most susceptible.

I am hereby positing a theory about what I’ll call my idle tears: Although my life is pretty stable right now, it wasn’t always so, and my excellent curative therapist only had two years, so we only scratched the surface of my PTSD from all that childhood trauma. Said trauma was pretty severe–I score a 19 out of 20 on a professional scale of childhood suckage–and maybe it’s still all in there, buried too deep to dream away, but not to cry out.

I just wish I could control them. But maybe the whole point is that I can’t.

 

In Which Our Heroine Chews Through a Strap, Part Two

29 Tuesday Nov 2016

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(This was sitting in my drafts pile for over a year. “Part One” is somewhere back there on the blog. I have no idea why; it’s still as true today as when it was written, except that there are a few more rays of light, now and then.)

Once upon a time my spiritual jaws were in top form: After long and prayerful consideration, I pushed aside all the “no” and “I can’t,” and entered formal discernment in the Diocese of Baltimore to become an Episcopal priest.

Things went well enough for about half a year, and then my faith was extracted by giant pliers of Life, leaving behind bleeding caverns where I had also once had a home and family (which I admit were fragile to begin with.)

I fell down the rabbit hole: I had been battling too many stressors for too long, and this loss triggered my illness. You can accomplish great things while hypomanic, and I put together my ragged little pieces as best I could and crawled back to grad school, and after some more upheavals, at last I got well, and crawled back out of the hole. All I had left with which to chew God was a lacy bridgework of outward and physical signs criss-crossing the horrific gaps it left in my soul stuff.

I have a good life now–but now that I am comparatively well, I have been grappling with a sad and bitter question: Was my faith only a symptom of my illness, all that joy and sense of purpose just mixed up with the dreaded “religious ideation?” I have recovered from bipolar disorder I and dissociative identity disorder–have I recovered from God as well? Was that extraction not a tooth, but a tumor? Many good and kind people would say so; would congratulate me for coming to my senses. But then why do I feel so sad?

Because I do, and not even Jell-o® Instant Pudding can make it go away. I miss that life. I miss the magic of driving half an hour on a cold spring morning to light the new fire of Easter.

When my faith got pulled, tooth by tooth of it, and I was left sore and still numb in a homeless shelter in New Jersey, I ran into a wise priest who heard my story over tea and gave me permission to be angry with God. I clung to that, both the anger and the permission, and when my head told me to get my ass back to church, I did it, despite the hollowness of that cheated feeling filling my torso. So I joined choir because I knew that shaky as my soul stuff was, my Performer was intact, and it would bring me back to church,

It’s been over ten years, and I have come to love that choir for its own sake. I’ve become a much better singer, but my sense of wonder, of grace, has remained cold and stiff, lying on the margin of my plate unchewed.

Dead or hibernating? And what happens if it comes back?

 

Aiee! Learning Experience!!!

27 Saturday Aug 2016

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This one in the shape of “If you can Google it, never trust them to make good decisions without your input.”

A week ago Monday I had my second knee replaced, and if anything, the surgery went even more smoothly than it had last time. No nasty little surprises like the blood clots in my lungs. But by Friday I was ready to move on to rehab. Fidgeting my brains out, actually. My roommate was a tiny older woman who amused and annoyed me by complaining about how much nicer my attendants were than hers–amused, because this was a textbook case of the Golden Rule, annoyed because I have limited patience with cranky extroverts. When she left, I realized that I would never have to hear the story of how the dog pulled her down the steps again, and life was GOOD.

Then my ambulance arrived, and off I went.

Now, for those new or who have forgotten, my last rehab center was quite nicely posh, and the two weeks there were a sort of vacation. The case manager at my hospital had explained to me this time that one could never be sure of landing in the right areas, and hinted that my rockstar recovery from the first surgery might mean I would only qualify for a “skilled nursing facility.” They had reassured me that my surgical group was all over this particular one out in Boston (i.e. easier for my spawn to visit) and it was quite nice; people wanted to go back. “OK,” I thought. “Sounds like a plan.” They waved a list of rehabs and SNFs at me, and made researching them sound boring and complicated. Besides, I knew that chances were great that it all really boiled down to where a bed was open. And maybe that’s what happened here.

It took a couple extra days, as it was; and although the place they picked (NOT the one my surgeons liked) didn’t look spiffy from Google maps, their website made them look a good bit spiffier. So then there we were, on the second highest heat index day of the year, and . . .

. . . I smelled pee. And bleach. Started to panic. But then, of course it was a nursing home, with people living there, not just traveling acts like mine. My eyes met those of the sympathetic ginger dragging the gurney. “I hope you know I’m trying not to throw myself around your legs and scream not to be left here,” I said, feeling my pulse begin to rocket.

He grinned. “You’re not here yet.” Meaning I still had a bit to go before not being able to change my diapers inspired me to clean out the medicine cabinet the uh, final way. Then they left, and I started to blink back tears.

I have no idea what my deal was even now; I have no nursing home-related traumas. But this place was . . .OMG. Remember, I was expecting a nice state-of-the-art rehab facility. Luckily for me, the admitting nurse was a nice normal person who validated what I was saying, squeezed my hand, and told me what the steps were to get transferred to another place. (Complicated and overwhelming.) She overheard me asking a kid on the phone, “Remember the sanitarium level in Psychonauts? This is it,” and cracked up. Aha, gamer girl! No wonder she rocked.

The residents shuffled. Or sat in gloomy deshabille in wheelchairs. It was hot and sticky, and, I repeat, there was The Smell. No art on the walls except for a big, dour calendar of events–your basic bingo, arts and crafts, and other thrills, none of which were actually announced while I was there. I was wheeled into a room with a lopsided old lady, who started telling me her woes immediately. I noticed that my bed was only sort of made, with the pillows scattered here and there. At least they were embarrassed enough of themselves so as to keep the rips in the pillowcases face down.

The bed itself was scary. It was from I don’t know how many decades ago–it had to be cranked from the floor to be raised or lowered, and the gizmo that made the head go up and down was the squeezy thing covered in grotty-looking rubber. It had a headboard and a footboard made of cheap lumber. The mattress was a chunk of foam rubber.

I ended up having a panic attack. My first real panic attack, complete with chest pain. Mercifully, I’m prescribed a benzo to help me sleep, so they had an order for that that came through by 11. I cowered in my weird little tent (the sheet-thickness curtains went right around the bed itself) and tried to work on my breathing. I have never been so close to having something click in my brain and send me to a psych ward involuntarily. (OK, it would have been voluntary. Anything to get me the hell out of there.)

The one decent nurse apologized a lot, especially for “dinner” which was what the kitchen scraped together in the wee hours of the morning (i.e., 6:30 pm): two limp cheese sandwiches in humid wax paper, with soured canned fruit and milk cartons (it was a 94 degree day, but still) and teeny yogurt containers. I had half of one of the sandwiches and one of the yogurts, because diabetes; but it was hard to get down.

In short, you name it, they had it–nurse assistants FOB (fresh off the boat) who didn’t have much English. (I unfortunately have no Haitian Creole and had to point at things.) Roommate fell out of bed in her quest for City Hospital. Got popped in upon by residents who were lost. Strange noises. The staff went through all my stuff, ostensibly to catalog it in case of “loss.” (I got a speck of amusement at how impressed they were that I’d packed a full two weeks of panties.)

My daughter there-there’d me during our incoherent phone call that evening, but her face made up for it the next morning. “Did I lie?” I demanded. Wide-eyed, she shook her head.

The nice nurse had warned me to expect resistance on the part of the upper staff to the idea of my getting out of there, and they indeed treated me almost as condescendingly as they did the dementia patients. And why not? I was saying the same things: I don’t belong here. I want to go home. Please, just let me go home. I’m not crazy. I bolstered myself by remembering that there were laws against imprisoning people against their will unless there were compelling and legal reasons. And took my Ativan around the clock, all weekend long, until the full staff (i.e., decision-makers) showed up on Monday morning. At least they had internet and I had my laptop so I could block out the screams, hoots, and moans of the milieu.

Big stroke of luck–their visiting doctor (yup, no full-time on staff as with the last rehab) works in the same team as my own PCP, which I swear gave me points or something. Or maybe it’s just that he didn’t have a whole lot invested in bed-filling in this dungeon. Anyway, I used the big word decompensation (pro-speak for “mental breakdown”) and he admitted I made a very good case and he had no problem signing me out to go home.

By more luck, I had already been practicing going up my 37 steps by using my good leg only, so I got home on Monday afternoon, only briefly flashing on kissing the ground and claiming it for Spain.

This Monday marks the three week point, and I would have been leaving a nice rehab right now anyway. Knee is doing well–0 and 105 degrees of straightening/flexion, so I can’t complain too much over all that missed PT and OT. But it took me a few days of awakening in my own bed before I realized immediately I was home and not still back there.

Next week: I learn how to complain. Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha. Feed me soggy cheese, I dare ya.

 

 

 

The Sparkly Feeling

28 Monday Dec 2015

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I just began the sequel to my WriMo, in which the cats (and I) consult a cousin chart and then more or less give up on the “once removed” and whatnot: They are looking for a missing cousin, leave it at that, and her wife. I have no idea what happened to them or how they are to be found; I have an image of Darjeeling in his panther form slinking through a field of wheat, but I don’t know if it actually occurs. I am in a place of mystery, and it sparkles.

I need some sparkle this morning; I had to leave a message with Boston Housing to tell them I am now essentially unemployed; I’ll keep leaving messages for a few days. I also filled out a tax form (badly), only just now spying the information which I should have put in a couple of boxes. I have other tax forms awaiting me, as now that I don’t have a child in college, I haven’t coaxed said child into filing my taxes for me. (I am so, so, SO phobic about paperwork. I’m not sure why. I’m pretty sure it began with poverty–very inconvenient of it.) Still ahead is knocking on the door of the food stamp people. Sigh.

But my brain is already feeling better about not having to Go Back There. It was all just so stressful, and I really do think that the “convenience” of having paratransit made it much worse. Paratransit is when you’re too disabled to use public transit well, so they send a car or a weird little truck to your door. It’s about twice as expensive as taking the train, but a fraction of what a cab would cost. When my right meniscus finally shredded itself to bits, I couldn’t walk up the half-mile hill to work anymore. Sigh. So not only did I end up waiting impatiently for their very random arrival and departure times, I lost some cardio and gained some weight. Grrr. More stress.

I’m also unsure about my fitness to continue working in what’s called direct service, which much of the time means dealing with highly stressed out people who have major life problems. It’s a brutal challenge to your patience and compassion, especially if you’re me and they have continence issues. I suspect it triggers me back to my unimaginably squalid childhood in the hands of a psychotic and alcoholic, which is my personal problem, but it wears on the brain nonetheless: I need to work somewhere where I don’t smell pee-pee. This all limits my options as a peer specialist, so the writing needs to take off.

At least that is still sparkly, although I have some horribly triggering stuff in Terry’s story to wade through. But I’ll wait til later; til my brain grows back somewhat. For now, sparkly.

The Music! The Trees! The Dead Cats!

06 Sunday Dec 2015

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I have about a zillion tiny changes to make in a bunch of Publisher files, and seeing as tomorrow I’m unavailable from roughly 1pm to bedtime, guess what? I’m avoiding doing it now! Yay me!

I also have to finish looking at somebody’s YA novel–50 more pages; thank mercy it’s a) better than usual and b) I dimly recall the first one, done 18 months ago. Then there’s a write-up. Also stalling there. Instead, I decided to catch you up (read: whinge) for a bit.

How do y’all feel about holiday music? I go all over the place, from fist-shaking and snarling (usually in stores, and when Mariah Carey is involved) to enjoying it (usually when doing something holiday-esque, and when the Rat Pack is involved). I am sad to say, though, that I’m not feeling the feels as a young neighbor practices Jingle Bells on some simple wind instrument. He just can’t get that G to save his little life. ( E-E-E! E-E-E! E . . .F?)

The issue is problematic at work. As far as I can tell, I have a few uncaring people, a whole bunch of rabid Christmas people–and one sad, lonely, angry guy who finds holiday music triggering and depressing. Oh sheep. Last week we were lucky, because he had a cold, but this week is going to be–unpleasant. I can see it now. We will probably resort to Mozart and please nobody but me. But I’m the boss, so hey now.

We are buying our first live tree in years next weekend, and I’m already nervous about it, as if it’s a temporary pet: I’m afraid of it dying on me almost immediately. That happened once; through the universe’s bad taste in black humor, one of our cats died right underneath it as well. (Probably a heart attack–sweet little guy, but he looked like he swallowed a bowling ball.) So I loaded up the tree, took it back to the lot, and was hysterical and incoherent. The poor, poor guy patted my hand a lot and gave me another tree for free. The kitty suffered the ultimate ignominy of ending up in the dumpster, seeing as the ground was frozen and what with Christmas and all, we didn’t have the funds for cremation. The whole experience was, shall we say, scarring.

And then there was the Christmas where we were new in town and discovered that the trees weren’t drilled for our spike stand. I remember digging into the pine with a pair of scissors and getting nowhere . . . I think twine played a part in tree support that year, and since we put it right near the heating duct on the floor, duhhhhh, of course it died too.

On the other hand, both kids hate the fake tree with a passion that ruins the tree trimming. So this year, I’m getting a real tree, baking me some cookies, and we’ll see what happens. I’ll keep you posted.