Shockingly, I completed every task on my to-do list today. Normally I accomplish this by lowering my standards and simply erasing 90% of the list. I get the satisfaction of a day well spent, without exerting any actual effort.Not today. After a period of feeling particularly depressed and anxious, I dragged myself out of bed by my spineless neck and put myself to work. My youngest child begins kindergarten tomorrow, and I need to be fully prepared to do absolutely nothing. I cleaned the cat vomit out of the carpool wagon, and disinfected the toilets so that she would not vomit in the van again after drinking from them. (I jest. She vomits because she eats wood chips. I am serious this time.) I did laundry with the speed and skill of a ninja (a ninja whose ninja outfits are all really dirty and realizes she needs a clean one to wear to Comic-Con.) Dishes? Do not insult me. They have all either been cleaned or dropped and broken. I feel FANTASTIC. Getting out of bed, and staying there, is so rewarding I may consider doing it again in the near future.
I appreciate the thoughtful tips on the instructive leaflets in my medication baggies. They suggest, for example, that to improve my mental state I may need this type of freqent activity in my life, not just these pills they are giving me. Of course, they caution that I still REALLY need their pills, because otherwise I would not give them my money, and then they would only be millionaires instead of billionaires, and then THEY would be depressed, and it would be my fault, and then wouldn't I feel guilty, and become more depressed? Umm... what was I saying before?
 |
| Hideously bad selfie while four-wheeling. Still, proof that I once got out of bed. |
The first piece of advice was to engage in exercise more rigorous than lifting Diet Mountain Dew cans, for 45 minutes a day. (Another tip was to avoid Diet Mountain Dew, but of course I had a hearty laugh at that nonsense.) The exercise bit was one of the best methods of therapy I have ever found, and I kept at it for at least five minutes. Ha! In reality, I followed this regimen for months, and I felt fabulous. I have since decided that my former practice of eating doughnuts while watching television is more fun, but I still do a slow-motion 45 minutes a day, a doughnut in one hand and a Dew in the other, and I am certain I have not returned to my previous level of insanity since. You would think that watching my thighs still jiggling after all that work would break my spirit, but it is like watching Mrs. Santa Claus dancing Zumba: entertaining and festive.
Another helpful tip is to keep participating in hobbies. As I have never really had any, aside from napping, I am wondering what my new one should be. My mother actually gave me a sewing machine, and naturally I assumed it would lead me to a successful career as an international clothing designer. Or, maybe I could at least create some simple sofa slipcovers. With matching throw pillows. Really, the possibilities stretched endlessly before me, until I failed to figure out how to even thread the machine needle. I CANNOT do it. I have spent an absurd amount of time reading instructions that are obviously upside down and badly translated from a foreign language. I cannot operate a beginner's sewing machine that parents probably give to their pre-teen children. Some people apparently do not deserve hobbies.
With my children gone during the day now, the activity I am most anticipating (besides using those clean bathrooms in peace) is reading. Books with many, many words and no, no pictures. I watched "Jane Eyre" today and suddenly remembered Charlotte Bronte had turned the movie into a book. Her sister Emily also wrote a nice adaptation of Wuthering Heights. (I wonder how those girls did all that before the TV miniseries was even invented by BBC.) Maybe somebody will write a novel based on that nice "Pride and Prejudice" movie, and I can read it this year. I hear a lady named Jane Austen pens some lovely romantic comedies. BBC should ask her to adapt the screenplay...
