Midsummer Briefing

On Tuesday I went to the doctor's office to fill out more forms to be in the sleep study.  It needs to be resubmitted to my insurance company for review.  It's been about five months since I first spoke to her about it!!! I also auditioned a new therapist (the mental kind) yesterday.  Don't worry, I just want a little tune-up.  Now that I have good insurance I might as well use it.  I would have contacted her months ago, as my former counselor recommended her, but I lost the card on which the number was written.  It turns out the card was exactly where it should have been all this time, in the file folder I made for such things.  I guess I'm doing too good a job at this organizing.  Yesterday I found my lost keys, and it turned out they were where they were supposed to be also, after days of looking.  My self-image hasn't caught up to the changes I've made in my surroundings.

Things have been so busy lately.  I usually go to the gym 4-5 times a week and I haven't been able to since last week.  I've taken over someone else's position at work while also doing my own tasks, but only until the new employee shows up.  Three friends and I are embarking on another annual long-term comics project, and I joined in art workshop taught by one of those friends over the weekend.  Also, I'm going to have an art opening next month and I'm cat sitting for a couple days next week.

I just finished a book by Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking, a memoir about losing her husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, while her daughter was in the hospital for septic shock.  I had avoided reading it for a long time for obvious reasons but now I'm glad I did.  I have never read her other writing, but I did see The Panic in Needle Park, which she and her husband wrote together.  Now I'm reading Radical Reinvention, Kaya Oakes' book about her return to the Catholic Church, and how she reconciles her faith with her liberal politics.  I got this book a couple years ago at Reading Frenzy but for some reason I'm really plowing through it at last.  Maybe sometime I'll talk about what these books mean to me on a personal level, but I'm in the middle of turning them over in my brain and heart and can't publish it right now.  Keep coming back.

      

Needs Improvement

Put together a new bookcase tonight, hammered the last nails in, and then placed it against the wall.  Then I noticed something wasn't right.  Can you guess what it is?

I'm going to pull out the nails and flip the back tomorrow.  At least I didn't have to use glue to attach it.  And I have plenty of extra nails if I mess up the ones from the package.

That's a scene from Modern Family on my laptop there, I was watching while I worked.  It strangely always reminds me of my own family even though none of the characters are much like any particular person I'm related to.

I'm doing way better than I have in over two years now.  My therapist thought I was doing so well that we agreed I could come for "as needed" sessions from now on.  That was almost a month ago.

I'll be doing Twilight Rummage Sale again this month, provided I can get a table.  I put the contact information here for anyone who wants to look into this for themselves.  Fun fun!

Moving On Up

I stopped into the new location of Village Merchants, which I first mentioned in this post a while back.  They are my favorite thrift store in town, which I thought might change after they moved, but they are even better now if that can be believed.  They are now on SE Division & 41st, about 7 blocks from their old building, which I heard I going to be torn down to make way for a new building.  Village Merchants is now bigger and better!  I mean, wayyy bigger!  They even have an upstairs!  There's more parking too, not that that was a huge problem before.  Now it'll be easier to lug bags of stuff I want to sell inside though.  Whoooppeee!!

Today was half great and half "Huh?"  I had dim sum with my friend Ann at a great place called Ocean City on SE 82nd.  We both had a feast with hot tea for under $20!!  After I ran a couple errands I took a long nap without meaning to.  When I woke up I thought it was only 6pm but it was 7:30!  I watched Twin Peaks with some friends and came back home.  I hope I get more done tomorrow, when I went to bed last night I couldn't sleep until about 4am so I think I just need a fresh start.

I've been thinking a lot about where I was last year with mental health and such, and how far I've come with managing grief, anxiety and depression.  Whoever tells you that there are these stages you go through to get to a healing place are full of crap.  The phases come and go.  I really am in a much better place but I've accepted that I'll be dealing with many of these issues for years to come.  This time last year I was having anxiety and panic attacks everyday, so bad that I went to see a doctor to make sure my heart was working properly.  I still have problems but I'm learning how to manage them instead of hoping they fade away someday.

That said, I couldn't help but notice that the blog post with the most hits was the one tagged with "mental illness".  Ha ha ha!!  Sorry, no big revelations there folks.