SAD much?

I've been busy.

OK, I'm a liar. I wasn't busy. For a long time. Like two months long. That's a long time when the average temperature was about 20 below, not counting windchill.

I started going to a therapist, I was so un-busy.

She took one look at me and sent my ass to a psychiatrist ... or maybe he was a psychologist. I have no clue. She just wanted to get me to someone who could diagnose any clinical bidness that was happenin'.

He said I was depressed.

No SHIT, Sherlock. 


Specifically, though, he said seasonally depressed. I nodded sagely and said, "Seasonal Affective Disorder."

No. He repeated, "Seasonally DEPRESSED."

Hmmm. OK, fine. Maybe that's the case.

Then I came home and looked through the photos I've snapped over the month prior to this appointment. Gee, Doc -- maybe you're right!

Here's what I've been up to:

I watched the Oscars with Bob. Well, I watched the Oscars. Bob took a nap. I think my
Facebook friend, Fred, said it best when he wrote, "All in all, I think the James Franco 
animatronic puppet was the best part of the show." Oh, Fred. That STILL makes me laugh.

Then I watched Craig Ferguson. In my jammies. A shocking turn of events, I know.

The BoyRD made a WalMart run. This is how he remembered  what pit stick to buy for me.

I was then forced to bathe and put on fresh jammies.

I read the new Pyschology Today in bed. I was wearing jammies then, too. There was an
article called, "Hey, Laura -- you might wanna get your ass out of bed and see some people.
We know it's as cold as the face of the moon, but really ... you gotta get out and mingle,
girl." I thought it was odd the article had such a long name, but it had some good points.

So I put on seventeen layers of clothes and drove to a meeting. It's March,
and the roads still look like this. Damned winter.

The meeting was at a restaurant. I asked for an iced tea with sweetener. They brought me
this rock candy on a stick business. I gnawed on it, giggling like a loon the whole time.
CANDY! Needless to say, it was totally worth getting out of the house. BONUS: I got
a really enjoyable freelance writing gig out of it.

Then 'Ria called and said, "Hey -- you wanna set my hair on fire?" Uh ... do I? DUH!

Something about putting 'Ria in mortal danger clicked with me. I accepted that getting
out and about here in the tundra is really a necessary part of mental health -- even
when it's cold enough for an Eskimo to say, "screw it" and go to Florida. But I digress.
The next morning, I decided to find breakfast through a window. And I saw evidence of a THAW!

It made me happy enough to try eating beets. They taste like dirt. I liked it.


The end. You may be seated.