Just regular folks.

I often think I should do more things “for fun” – like going to plays, or sports outings or concerts or cherry blossom viewings or whatever. I think I don’t really know how to have fun or anticipate having fun. Like – I almost never “look forward” to something even if it’s a spring break vacation in Miami or (which is suppose to happen!!) seeing a beloved friend or eating a delicious cake. My mind always slides to the hassle, the potential fights, or the extra pounds. So to remedy this tendency, I get on a kick of signing up for random things and trying them out in the name of learning to have fun. I am literally like the only person who wants to practice having fun. Yesterday, I took a croissant baking class because I wanted to learn to laminate butter and dough. I went on my own and we worked in teams of 4 (there were three teams) and we managed these chocolate croissants. Not bad, right? We had to rush some of the rises and such things – it’s really suppose to take 2-3 days to make a croissant.

And a set of morning buns (though I’d call them cinnamon buns).

I enjoyed the class and the lamination isn’t that hard once you take the time and know the goals of not melting the butter. But I had had an argument with Jeremy early in the am (the first since going on the medication) so I wasn’t in the most pleasant mood during the class. The class itself was fine and enjoyable, and maybe on a different day, I would have enjoyed the company, but this time, it was a bit of a sugar slog of French baking small talk. Haha. But I brought all of my treats home and we had them over a pleasant dinner – trying to work through the argument we had in the morning over some chocolate. My mood is still much better than it was at the beginning of the year – though not quite back to my old self, but maybe we’d be good with some couples therapy. It’s a lot of stuff to get used to post pandemic – working together all the time, Vince off at school, Edda’s school ending, etc.

On Friday, I went mother of the bride dress shopping with Rachel which was impromptu and kind of fun. It’s a lavish wedding in three weeks, I thought the MOTB dress would have been procured a while ago, but it was not the case.

Otherwise a quiet-ish weekend. I worked a bunch, I feel like much of my life is taken up by administrative tasks and that I used to be efficient at them, but now I am not.

Elka enjoyed a pup pop.

I spent a couple of hours on Sunday doing a Pokemon walk with Sofie and taught her about gyms. It was a lovely day.

Look how absolutely grey my hair is, lol. What is the cat doing in front of me?

Trying to steal my ice cream. It’s mine! Shoo.

Elka peed so many times all over the house yesterday – like literally 2 weeks without accidents and now a whole bunch in one day. At least this time it was on carpeting that we can remove and wash and lift up (one was a brand new large Ruggable that we took out from the box approximately 4 hours before Elka decided to pee on it that they (the Ruggable-ites) sent us by accident about a year ago after we ordered a very small Ruggable). But still – you know with your kids – you say – I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed.

We are gearing up to host Edda’s birthday party extravaganza. After cancelling 2020, 2021, 2022, we are doing it this year – decided on only in February. The invite list is growing, it’s going to be something.

The floors are in! They are beautiful and the installers were kind, thoughtful and expert and put it together in about 1.5 days. The rest of the house is a complete disaster as we had to almost empty the entire rooms to remove the carpeting and give them room to maneuver. I moved my work back into the room and want it to stay empty forever! I have this dream that I own very little, but it’s not true. I own a lot of crap.

A busy weekend – but satisfying. Vince celebrated turning 21 by, yes, going out to buy a beer with his friends – at like 4 in the afternoon on Friday. Then Vince went back to campus and showed up at the coffee lab where his professor and grad student mentors were ready to call it a day and suggested they go out – for another beer! And Vince was like – I was just at that bar!

So Vince went to another bar with his professor and grad student. The first time at the first bar, they took his MD ID no problem. The 2nd bar, while hanging out with old people, Vince said they took his ID back to consult with other people – because – as he told us, it was like “a McLovin” ID – from way out of state and also that he turned 21 the day before. To which we were like, huh? Turns out it’s a fake ID from Hawaii in the movie Superbad. I found it on the internet.

Jeremy went to coffee with a colleague to talk business (and see her new baby and old husband).

We spent a lot of time prepping for the wood floor install. I did not exercise all weekend which is actually shocking to me because I always exercise on the weekend – if only a bit of yoga here or there. I decided removing carpet for hours squatting on the floor was enough exercise for me.

We toasted to being parents for 21 years. Our parenthood is old enough to have a beer. I had a hard cider which I finished only half – that was fun enough. It’s nice to have a small celebration of this milestone.

I was dubious about the therapy, but I like my therapist. We are stepping through some CBT exercises. We’ll see how it goes.

Vince is 21 today! Thank you for making me a mother, it is an honor to be your parent. Look at these two:

Vince asked for a few things: a Costco membership and prescription lab safety glasses. Exactly what most 21 year olds would ask for, right?

I’m in a passionate love affair with our dog. Even Jeremy notices that for whatever reason, I just love and adore Elka. I know you aren’t supposed to have a favorite child, but I’ve not ever been so head over heels about an animal before. Elka is not the easiest of all the dogs that we’ve had, nor is she the cleverest, but somehow, she has stolen my heart. I think I’ve easily kissed her more in the past year than I have my husband. I will walk by her and lift her snout to my lips and kiss her 17 times in a row until she reciprocates by licking my lips with her tongue (even though I know she’s recently eaten poop (deer, rabbit, squirrel, other dogs, perhaps a cat) or a rotting mouse carcass) and then I will proceed on with my day. Sometimes I will do this in bed with Elka tucked between Jeremy and me and I’ll shower Elka with kisses and then I will feel bad and scoot over and lift Jeremy’s face to my lips and shower him with the same number of kisses on his snout (nose). And then Jeremy will laugh. I take Elka to the country club dog park and ignore the other human patrons and just watch her run and wrestle and live out her doggie dreams. There is nothing more beautiful that watching her extend her body fully in a straight out sprint full of joy with her doggie friends – her mutt background mixing with all those doodles – golden doodle, lab doodle, irish doodle, bernese doodle – OMG those doodle mixes have no end – and don’t forget about the frenchies. It’s either doodles or frenchies. lol. I know she loves me, but I still think she prefers Jeremy. I think I love her because I want to be like her – relaxed, loves everyone, forgets to pee/poop because she’s too busy playing always full of joy for life. She does have her faults – she’ll forever pee/poop in the house because she doesn’t really care about keeping her living area clean (though no accidents since the Pipster moved out just because it’s easier to keep track of only one dog’s comings/goings), and she destroys things like Uggs or remote controls – but we all have our faults I suppose.

This is the big house renovation weekend – we are moving furniture and ripping out carpet ahead of our big wood floor install next week. In honor of that, I patched my work pants which had a big rip in the knee. I know people love the ripped knee, but it just feels cold to me.

I’m feeling a lot better these days, laughing more and yelling not at all. The Effexor seems to have a short half life, so I wake up grumpy and sad and then I take the med and things seem brighter and more manageable for most of the rest of day. After the initial couple of doses of the med where I felt almost euphoric for a weekend, it has settled down. I’m mostly happy with it, I don’t think I’ll change it to Lexapro, my previous med, because it’s doing the main thing I wanted it to do which was to control the daily rage I was feeling.

My doctor mentioned that federal workers get some therapy sessions through work. It turns out that I get six free sessions and I don’t even have to take time off to go to them, I get 6 hours of time to go to the sessions and there was availability within two days of calling, so I went to a federal building in Rockville to meet with a social worker – I’m doing the first two sessions in person and then, I think, I’ll switch the last four to virtual – though I think you lose something when it’s virtual. I’ll see. It’s not too far from the house, maybe I should just go to them to get out of the house. I dislike therapy because I feel like I’ve spend a lot of time thinking about my emotional states and listen/read to lots of psychology things (cognitive behaviour therapy and other various approaches to negative thinking)- so basically I think I’m pretty self-aware – so when things are going smoothly, I’m pretty unflappable. And I’ve not been on meds for the past decade or so! Very proud of myself. And I worked through many, many things when I was younger and depressed – like wanting other people to change, wanting things to be “perfect”, jealousy, caring about what other people think, being anxious about things not going “correctly”, etc. I feel like I’ve put all these things to bed and when I’m well, these are all fine and I have no trouble with it – I’m even keeled and generally roll with it all. But when things are not going smoothly, all the tools I have psychologically tend to fail me – and trust me, I try because I really don’t want to take the meds. Therapy – at least starting out – tends to rehash all these exercises that I’ve done for a long time. But I’m open to it, I’ll try. (Also, sometimes I think talking about things too much tends to focus one’s attention to it when it’s better to, as Elsa says, let it go.). That’s all therapy is, to remind you over and over again to just – let it go, let it go and don’t hang on too tightly.

When I fall into these tight, constricted holes, I tend to think my behaviour during these moments are my “true” self and that when I get onto my meds, I’m my medicated “fake” self. And that my “true” self is an angry, selfish, sad sack of a person. Jeremy was like – no no no, when you are angry every eight hours or can’t stop crying or can’t get out of bed, that’s you in the grips of a mental illness – not your true self and when you control your mental illness with meds, your true self is allowed to come out. Sometimes I don’t even know what is true anymore.