Summertime Blues

I'm in the middle of my yearly summer depression. The heat, the pain and having to stay inside all the time get to me and my mood plummets. I usually don't start feeling better until it gets cooler in October. I get "intrusive thoughts" during this time of year; thoughts that will jump into my head when I'm engrossed in something else: "You'll die soon", "You'll be a widow", things along those lines. I've been in therapy for years learning different ways to cope with these thoughts, but nothing has ever made them stop.

Sometimes I think that I'll die never having enjoyed living, and this makes me even sadder. There have been episodes when I enjoyed my life, such as when my husband and I knew we were the ones for each other and when we married. I love being married and I can honestly say that it's the one good thing I've accomplished in my life, but I still feel like I'm just existing. Many times I feel like I'm too damaged to enjoy living, like a toy that's been thrown across the room too many times and won't work right. Life is a trial, for the most part.

All of this has nothing to do with anyone else in my life now. It's all to do with stuff from my past, dragging me down like a ball and chain. How old do I have to be to get rid of it? I don't like talking about this stuff to anyone, even if they ask. I know they're just doing it to be polite. It's boring and tiresome to me, so why would it be interesting to someone else? I post about it in this blog because it's the only place I feel comfortable about confiding.

I'll feel differently in October, I always do. That's the one lesson I've learned from dealing with life-long black depressions; this too shall pass. It always does. Whether what comes after is good or bad is hard to say.

Random School Memories - First Grade

I started school in 1971 at age 5. I attended Catholic school in Dallas, even though I wasn't Catholic; mainly because my mother had taught me to read and write when I was 4 and Dallas public schools would not allow 5-year-olds to begin first grade. Since my birthday was in October, I would've to have waited another year to begin class. The Catholics allowed non-Catholic children to attend class there as long as their parents didn't have a problem with the kids attending catechism class and morning mass. So, I was Catholic for a year.
We got to wear cute little uniforms, which I loved. My mom was working two jobs to support me after my parents' divorce and she didn't have any extra money for stylish clothes or indeed sometimes for food, so my clothes would be quite threadbare. Kids can be very cruel if you were different in any way; the uniform meant that I looked like everyone else and I was grateful for that. I already felt very apart from everyone, even at that young age. We used Big Chief tablets to write in (with a picture of a hippie on the front; not the ones with an Indian chief) and those big fat pencils to write with.


My teacher was Sister Bernadette, who dressed in a pantsuit with her veil. I remember being smacked across the knuckles with a ruler when she caught me trying to write left-handed like my mother. Our class went on several great field trips; the Schweppes ice cream factory (we got little containers of peppermint ice cream), the Mrs. Baird's Bakery on Mockingbird (we got little loaves of bread) and the Dr Pepper bottling plant (guess what we got there?).

My mom could only afford for me to attend one year and she wasn't wild about me actually becoming Catholic if I stayed any longer (her family was Southern Baptist. She didn't tell any of them that I was in Catholic school; they would have shit a brick!) so for second grade, I would attend Reinhardt Elementary in east Dallas. More to come.......

Not a Girly-Girl

I've never been accused of being feminine. I don't get manicures or pedicures, I don't wear dresses or shorts unless forced, I take only the minimal amount of time to out on makeup, and that's only during the week. When I'm not working, I don't wear makeup.
I used to paint my grandmother's nails and give her manicures, but I'm absolutely terrible at treating myself to such luxuries. When I try to paint my own nails, it looks sloppy and awful.
I hate clothes shopping with a burning passion. I'd rather do yard work than go clothes shopping. I'd rather eat liver than go clothes shopping. I wear jeans and t-shirts exclusively, which is boring but comfortable.
Maybe my poor sense of self-esteem is to blame? You can see by my headline picture that I love glamor, but I cannot see myself in that way. I'd like to, to a certain extent. I'm certainly not going to out forth the effort that most women do, but I would like to change my appearance. I'm not happy with this one.

A Fox in the Henhouse

Not really, but we did have a raccoon in the office yesterday. My co-worker was quite surprised when he ambled into her cubicle. Our boss would have been even more surprised if she had been in her office when it fell through the ceiling.....

Anniversary

My marriage makes it possible for me to live. I have no doubt that I could exist by myself, because I've done so before, but that's all it would be: existing. I consider my husband and myself to be two halves of a whole. We've been married for 15 years this month and we've been together for 20 years this November. I hate being apart from him.
When I was younger, I never fretted about not having boyfriends. I knew that my soul mate was out there somewhere and I would find him eventually. My marriage is the best thing I've done in my life.

A Smile, Two Bangs and A Religion

This is where I got the title of my blog and it's also one of my favorite Python sketches "Live at the Refreshment Room, Bletchley":


Here's another favorite: Tonight, mollusks.


My all-time favorite Monty Python sketch is this one, which has to do with "woody" sounding words as opposed to "tinny" sounding words:


Most of the Python sketches I loved were written by Eric Idle, who had a degree in English. I love to play with words and phrases. My degree is in Linguistics, the study of language, which includes slang and dialects:

Work

Tomorrow, I help my supervisor teach a class on payment vouchers. I'm supposed to teach half of the class, then all of the classes after this one. I enjoy it, so I'm looking forward to it. I'm almost finished with the office intranet site too.

I had another cervical steroid injection today and I'm having a lot of pain. My thighs are spasming like I've ridden a bike up Mount Kilimanjaro and I have a dull headache, not to mention wanting to eat everything in the house. I suppose that's a side effect from the steroids. I've held off, though. I'll need to remember the Darvocet tomorrow. I'm going to need it.