The Mythos of the Garden Tub

I've been kind of down the past few days and I'm not sure why. Hormones maybe? Latent grief from the 6/30 anniversary maybe. Maybe it's because I haven't worked out in days and I'm building up all that stress and tension that normally gets let out on my Total Gym. I'm unsure. What I do know is that the more I'm thinking on it and examining it the more down I'm getting, the more frustrated I'm getting so as of yesterday I decided fuck it, I'll just be down for however long this is going to be. No big deal. No one died, I've not been wronged, hormonally speaking though I'm not in my happy place.
My husband told me yesterday I should go take a bath in our tub. This is truly some sort of recipe for ultimate bliss. I bought my house BECAUSE of the tub I swear to you. This tub is so big that I have, at some points in my parenting, been able to put FOUR children in it comfortably. Then it was three, then two. I'm down to one at a time now but still, it's a damn big tub. You could join me. We've have our feet all up in each other's business but you definitely COULD join me.

When I think of my tub, I think of this...

Of course, it doesn't look anything like that. Mine is 25+ years old, and the jets don't work anymore and it needs regrouted around the tile. I'm surrounded by this hideous faux victorian wallpaper, which looks a bit like this...

the main difference therein being that the one I grabbed to show you is sort of pretty and the one in my bathroom is like the Fingerhut version of that same print. NOT delicate and lovely, in other words.

The other important thing about my amazing garden tub, the one for which I bought an entire house is this - I never use it. Months, years go by, and I never get into the thing. There aren't enough hours in the day to do all of the things I want to do. I want to get into my tub and luxuriate but I never do, so my husband's suggestion of a long hot bath to help soak away my blues seemed like an amazing suggestion. We added a glass of wine to complete the relaxation and I felt like I was in heaven.

You might think maybe I would look like this...

Well that would be how I look in my mind.

You see, I don't have proper wine glasses unpacked (yes I've lived here seven years leave me alone I'll get to it). What I DO have are some snowman printed goblets from when my brother and SIL came down for Thanksgiving the VERY first year I lived in Atlanta (which was awesome btw guys). In my snowman printed goblet, I pour a liberal amount of  fruity blackberry merlot because life is not too short to drink cheap wine.

There I recline, in a huge tub filled with epsom salts (I was thinking these might soak out the poisons in my mind), and a snowman goblet filled with a wine that makes my tongue tingle.  The door is closed and the water is steamy, and I lay back and let the smell of pink peony and rose oil surround me and just try to think calm things.

Crash conk blonk "Don't BOTHER MOM!" I hear. I like to try to deciper the sounds from behind the door of my refuge. I hear toys being dug for in a toy box, I hear stomping (Miles is into stomping), I hear laughter. I submerge and listen to the same sounds from underwater, indecipherable now, like messages from a distant planet.

I slather on No7 Cleaning gel oil which by the way is the best stuff ever for this 46 year old face, it says it's for dry skin but I think it's a miracle product for 40 year old faces. It also has some magical property apparently, according to it's label it goes on as a thick gel, turns into an oil and then turns into a milk. That's got to be some serious science going on there, or magic. I'm not sure which.

I soak in the magic of the body wash that says it's got pink peony and rose oil, I turn it over and can't find pink peony anywhere on the ingredients. I can't find any latin words that would BE pink peony if I looked them up. There are a lot of isosomethingorother ingredients and sodium laurthorsomething. I do find rose oil about half way down so I've only been HALF lied to and I feel better about this. I feel like Tone body wash has lied to me, though, and I'm mentally shaking my fist at them.

I slather kids shampoo on, and gaze around the room, I'm not surrounded by candles and potpourri, I'm surrounded by laundry that needs pre-stained and sorted. Two kids in diapers at age 11 mean a lot of clothes need extra work before the washer, and there isn't anything to be done by lay it out the best place possible - my huge ass tub's ledge is perfect.

Some people always have such elegant shit going on with their towels. I wouldn't know how to begin to have such an array of fine towels around me. Maybe that's 12 years of mom mentality. I've got the big rack made to hold your huge fluffy bath towels, it's got a single hand towel tossed over it. Over the stand up shower that doesn't work there are the bath towels draped so that they can dry properly. The ninja turtles, Sophia the First, and Lightning McQueen are all represented. On the peg hook Spiderman is represented.

I've chosen Lightning McQueen and Spiderman as my towels today, with my floor towel being a lovely towel that used to be a deep rose color my mom mother purchased at Sears about 30 years ago when she did a spruce up to my Grandmother's bathroom. These towels were SO lovely and fluffy when new that my Grandmother proclaimed them too good to use and promptly folded them and put them away in the cabinet. She gave them to me in their pristine conditions when I moved out on my own in the 1990s.

I finish my second glass of wine and submerge, realizing that I'm underwater, have had two glasses of wine and this is how people suddenly pass out and drown and it'll be a headline "Mother of four drowns in freak accident outside Atlanta" so I come up for air and just lay back in the hot flowery water.

I don't know what's wrong with me, maybe sometimes it's just ok to feel like this "everything is too much" and in a few days I won't feel like that at all. I can honestly say that this morning I don't actually feel like that, I can feel stress glimmering on the edges of my mind but I don't feel it right now. I'm drinking coffee with cream and sugar waistline be damned it's what I want.

Part of me wonders though, waking up on this Sunday, if the 45 minutes of soaking did help part of that fade away? Epsom salts are weird things, allegedly this is true:
 Epsom salt has beneficial properties that can soothe the body, mind and soul. Some of the countless health benefits include relaxing the nervous system, curing skin problems, soothing back pain and aching limbs, easing muscle strain, healing cuts, treating cold and congestion, and drawing toxins from the body

Maybe it's true, because very oddly I do feel better. In fact, I think I'm going to have another coffee. With cream AND sugar. Carpe Diem! Because I only say YOLO when I'm being ironic and it's just too early for that, folks.
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The Mythos of the Garden Tub

I've been kind of down the past few days and I'm not sure why. Hormones maybe? Latent grief from the 6/30 anniversary maybe. Maybe it's because I haven't worked out in days and I'm building up all that stress and tension that normally gets let out on my Total Gym. I'm unsure. What I do know is that the more I'm thinking on it and examining it the more down I'm getting, the more frustrated I'm getting so as of yesterday I decided fuck it, I'll just be down for however long this is going to be. No big deal. No one died, I've not been wronged, hormonally speaking though I'm not in my happy place.
My husband told me yesterday I should go take a bath in our tub. This is truly some sort of recipe for ultimate bliss. I bought my house BECAUSE of the tub I swear to you. This tub is so big that I have, at some points in my parenting, been able to put FOUR children in it comfortably. Then it was three, then two. I'm down to one at a time now but still, it's a damn big tub. You could join me. We've have our feet all up in each other's business but you definitely COULD join me.

When I think of my tub, I think of this...

Of course, it doesn't look anything like that. Mine is 25+ years old, and the jets don't work anymore and it needs regrouted around the tile. I'm surrounded by this hideous faux victorian wallpaper, which looks a bit like this...

the main difference therein being that the one I grabbed to show you is sort of pretty and the one in my bathroom is like the Fingerhut version of that same print. NOT delicate and lovely, in other words.

The other important thing about my amazing garden tub, the one for which I bought an entire house is this - I never use it. Months, years go by, and I never get into the thing. There aren't enough hours in the day to do all of the things I want to do. I want to get into my tub and luxuriate but I never do, so my husband's suggestion of a long hot bath to help soak away my blues seemed like an amazing suggestion. We added a glass of wine to complete the relaxation and I felt like I was in heaven.

You might think maybe I would look like this...

Well that would be how I look in my mind.

You see, I don't have proper wine glasses unpacked (yes I've lived here seven years leave me alone I'll get to it). What I DO have are some snowman printed goblets from when my brother and SIL came down for Thanksgiving the VERY first year I lived in Atlanta (which was awesome btw guys). In my snowman printed goblet, I pour a liberal amount of  fruity blackberry merlot because life is not too short to drink cheap wine.

There I recline, in a huge tub filled with epsom salts (I was thinking these might soak out the poisons in my mind), and a snowman goblet filled with a wine that makes my tongue tingle.  The door is closed and the water is steamy, and I lay back and let the smell of pink peony and rose oil surround me and just try to think calm things.

Crash conk blonk "Don't BOTHER MOM!" I hear. I like to try to deciper the sounds from behind the door of my refuge. I hear toys being dug for in a toy box, I hear stomping (Miles is into stomping), I hear laughter. I submerge and listen to the same sounds from underwater, indecipherable now, like messages from a distant planet.

I slather on No7 Cleaning gel oil which by the way is the best stuff ever for this 46 year old face, it says it's for dry skin but I think it's a miracle product for 40 year old faces. It also has some magical property apparently, according to it's label it goes on as a thick gel, turns into an oil and then turns into a milk. That's got to be some serious science going on there, or magic. I'm not sure which.

I soak in the magic of the body wash that says it's got pink peony and rose oil, I turn it over and can't find pink peony anywhere on the ingredients. I can't find any latin words that would BE pink peony if I looked them up. There are a lot of isosomethingorother ingredients and sodium laurthorsomething. I do find rose oil about half way down so I've only been HALF lied to and I feel better about this. I feel like Tone body wash has lied to me, though, and I'm mentally shaking my fist at them.

I slather kids shampoo on, and gaze around the room, I'm not surrounded by candles and potpourri, I'm surrounded by laundry that needs pre-stained and sorted. Two kids in diapers at age 11 mean a lot of clothes need extra work before the washer, and there isn't anything to be done by lay it out the best place possible - my huge ass tub's ledge is perfect.

Some people always have such elegant shit going on with their towels. I wouldn't know how to begin to have such an array of fine towels around me. Maybe that's 12 years of mom mentality. I've got the big rack made to hold your huge fluffy bath towels, it's got a single hand towel tossed over it. Over the stand up shower that doesn't work there are the bath towels draped so that they can dry properly. The ninja turtles, Sophia the First, and Lightning McQueen are all represented. On the peg hook Spiderman is represented.

I've chosen Lightning McQueen and Spiderman as my towels today, with my floor towel being a lovely towel that used to be a deep rose color my mom mother purchased at Sears about 30 years ago when she did a spruce up to my Grandmother's bathroom. These towels were SO lovely and fluffy when new that my Grandmother proclaimed them too good to use and promptly folded them and put them away in the cabinet. She gave them to me in their pristine conditions when I moved out on my own in the 1990s.

I finish my second glass of wine and submerge, realizing that I'm underwater, have had two glasses of wine and this is how people suddenly pass out and drown and it'll be a headline "Mother of four drowns in freak accident outside Atlanta" so I come up for air and just lay back in the hot flowery water.

I don't know what's wrong with me, maybe sometimes it's just ok to feel like this "everything is too much" and in a few days I won't feel like that at all. I can honestly say that this morning I don't actually feel like that, I can feel stress glimmering on the edges of my mind but I don't feel it right now. I'm drinking coffee with cream and sugar waistline be damned it's what I want.

Part of me wonders though, waking up on this Sunday, if the 45 minutes of soaking did help part of that fade away? Epsom salts are weird things, allegedly this is true:
 Epsom salt has beneficial properties that can soothe the body, mind and soul. Some of the countless health benefits include relaxing the nervous system, curing skin problems, soothing back pain and aching limbs, easing muscle strain, healing cuts, treating cold and congestion, and drawing toxins from the body

Maybe it's true, because very oddly I do feel better. In fact, I think I'm going to have another coffee. With cream AND sugar. Carpe Diem! Because I only say YOLO when I'm being ironic and it's just too early for that, folks.
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Even Happy Girls Can Get Depression

A friend of mine posted about looking for some guidance/help for what she felt like was depression. I reached out privately because despite my normally sunny disposition, I once had depression.

Most people don't really know that about me. I don't talk about it much. My husband knows, because the effects lingered for a long time in the form of an anxiety I've struggled to control.

I had a classic case of post partum depression. Depression is weird, it sneaks up on you and makes itself your norm. You don't feel it's invasion, or I didn't. It turns off some vital parts of you - in me it was the parts that cared about much of anything. I loved my new baby, but I didn't care if I showered. I didn't care if I got off the sofa. In fact, the sofa and the baby and I were a perfect trio. I didn't want to leave the house. I didn't want to be apart from my husband for any reason.

I wasn't sad but I wasn't happy. I wasn't anything. I was a life support system for a now external dependent organism. I functioned.

It was only when I should've been well enough to get back to life that it became apparently I wasn't myself. My OBGYN caught it when I went for my 8 week well visit. He prescribed me something, and I probably should've taken it but I couldn't see myself as a depressed person. I had trouble realizing depression isn't an emotion sometimes - it's a state of being.

I didn't want to be that person so I decided not to take my medicine and just back to work.

Work was good for me and helped a lot. But my anxiety focused on very specific things. I didn't want to go into shops. Sometimes I'd cry in the parking lot, not wanting to go inside Walmart. The worst part was realizing I wasn't being reasonable or rational and unable to stop. You sit and say to yourself "I'm an intelligent woman there's nothing more than the usual people of Walmart inside" but feeling an abject terror that someone in there might speak to me. What might happen if they speak? I don't know but I knew I couldn't handle it.

My fear of being lost while driving intensified. I've had this one for a while but it became crippling. I couldn't be lost for any reason. I couldn't be lost if someone else was driving, even that could bring me to tears. Why? I can't tell you.

I'm a lot better almost five years later. I can tell you for sure that 4 years ago I'd have been sobbing through the streets of Montreal as I tried to find my friend's flat. Two weeks ago I simply drove and followed Siri an when she didn't make sense I guessed. I got there just fine. It was a great adventure. I wasn't scared - and it wasn't until I realized I wasn't anxious at all about driving that I realized how far I've come.

I'm writing this because I'm usually the last person people think of when they consider depression, but I wanted to share because it can happen to anyone. It's chemical and none of us can control it. The best thing to do is talk about it with someone you trust and then to a medical someone you trust. I say pick the doctor you like BEST and talk to them, any doctor can refer you somewhere, but you need to be comfortable because it's not easy to say you're not "right". But it helps to realize you can get help.

Even a girl who is happy every day can have depression.

Tweet

Even Happy Girls Can Get Depression

A friend of mine posted about looking for some guidance/help for what she felt like was depression. I reached out privately because despite my normally sunny disposition, I once had depression.

Most people don't really know that about me. I don't talk about it much. My husband knows, because the effects lingered for a long time in the form of an anxiety I've struggled to control.

I had a classic case of post partum depression. Depression is weird, it sneaks up on you and makes itself your norm. You don't feel it's invasion, or I didn't. It turns off some vital parts of you - in me it was the parts that cared about much of anything. I loved my new baby, but I didn't care if I showered. I didn't care if I got off the sofa. In fact, the sofa and the baby and I were a perfect trio. I didn't want to leave the house. I didn't want to be apart from my husband for any reason.

I wasn't sad but I wasn't happy. I wasn't anything. I was a life support system for a now external dependent organism. I functioned.

It was only when I should've been well enough to get back to life that it became apparently I wasn't myself. My OBGYN caught it when I went for my 8 week well visit. He prescribed me something, and I probably should've taken it but I couldn't see myself as a depressed person. I had trouble realizing depression isn't an emotion sometimes - it's a state of being.

I didn't want to be that person so I decided not to take my medicine and just back to work.

Work was good for me and helped a lot. But my anxiety focused on very specific things. I didn't want to go into shops. Sometimes I'd cry in the parking lot, not wanting to go inside Walmart. The worst part was realizing I wasn't being reasonable or rational and unable to stop. You sit and say to yourself "I'm an intelligent woman there's nothing more than the usual people of Walmart inside" but feeling an abject terror that someone in there might speak to me. What might happen if they speak? I don't know but I knew I couldn't handle it.

My fear of being lost while driving intensified. I've had this one for a while but it became crippling. I couldn't be lost for any reason. I couldn't be lost if someone else was driving, even that could bring me to tears. Why? I can't tell you.

I'm a lot better almost five years later. I can tell you for sure that 4 years ago I'd have been sobbing through the streets of Montreal as I tried to find my friend's flat. Two weeks ago I simply drove and followed Siri an when she didn't make sense I guessed. I got there just fine. It was a great adventure. I wasn't scared - and it wasn't until I realized I wasn't anxious at all about driving that I realized how far I've come.

I'm writing this because I'm usually the last person people think of when they consider depression, but I wanted to share because it can happen to anyone. It's chemical and none of us can control it. The best thing to do is talk about it with someone you trust and then to a medical someone you trust. I say pick the doctor you like BEST and talk to them, any doctor can refer you somewhere, but you need to be comfortable because it's not easy to say you're not "right". But it helps to realize you can get help.

Even a girl who is happy every day can have depression.

Tweet

Contentment

I was driving home today, or rather sitting on the highway outside of Atlanta, in the 100 degree heat. My SUV was jam packed with a swing set recently acquired from FREECYCLE. Swinging from one of the poles, that will one day very soon support swings or a glider or a slide, was a long strand of gossamer......and swaying in the hot wind was a very small spider. Since the cars weren't actually moving, I sat and watched it. It was trying its best to get UP the strand,but the wind which was coming from HELL itself apparently was keeping it from making proper progress.

I realized watching it that just a very few weeks ago I was a lot like that spider.

I couldn't progress. I couldn't get off the couch and get dressed. I couldn't get into the shower.

I was swinging at the end of a gossamer thread that I didn't really even know I was there.

I have had a lot of people ask me about my "depression" and it feels so odd, just a few weeks later, to have forgotten that helplessness, that hopelessness that was driving me then. Within days of returning to work my sense of purpose returned, my joy came back and I felt like me again.

Yes, it's hard to have a new baby and two special needs children and an older child who also wants my attention PLUS work full time. But it was harder to be here and completely ineffectual in every action I took. I wasn't a good Mom to anyone. I wasn't a good friend, or much of a good anything.

So at 2am, when she won't sleep I've got my copy of AMERICAN GODS next to the bed and I know that I'm going to be tired tomorrow. And I'll read while she wiggles and finds her comfy spot in my arms, and then when she finally decides she can sleep I'll deposit her in her bed and return to mine.

And I'm great with that.

How's my depression? What depression?

Contentment

I was driving home today, or rather sitting on the highway outside of Atlanta, in the 100 degree heat. My SUV was jam packed with a swing set recently acquired from FREECYCLE. Swinging from one of the poles, that will one day very soon support swings or a glider or a slide, was a long strand of gossamer......and swaying in the hot wind was a very small spider. Since the cars weren't actually moving, I sat and watched it. It was trying its best to get UP the strand,but the wind which was coming from HELL itself apparently was keeping it from making proper progress.

I realized watching it that just a very few weeks ago I was a lot like that spider.

I couldn't progress. I couldn't get off the couch and get dressed. I couldn't get into the shower.

I was swinging at the end of a gossamer thread that I didn't really even know I was there.

I have had a lot of people ask me about my "depression" and it feels so odd, just a few weeks later, to have forgotten that helplessness, that hopelessness that was driving me then. Within days of returning to work my sense of purpose returned, my joy came back and I felt like me again.

Yes, it's hard to have a new baby and two special needs children and an older child who also wants my attention PLUS work full time. But it was harder to be here and completely ineffectual in every action I took. I wasn't a good Mom to anyone. I wasn't a good friend, or much of a good anything.

So at 2am, when she won't sleep I've got my copy of AMERICAN GODS next to the bed and I know that I'm going to be tired tomorrow. And I'll read while she wiggles and finds her comfy spot in my arms, and then when she finally decides she can sleep I'll deposit her in her bed and return to mine.

And I'm great with that.

How's my depression? What depression?

The One Where I Join the Herd

In what I consider to be a very annoying turn of events, I've been diagnosed with post-partum depression.

Truth be told, I pretty much already knew I had it. My complete disinterest in everything in the world, my lack of interest in blogging, my lack of desire for changing my clothes for days on end - yeah - I'm not an idiot. I knew I was wallowing in depression. Then there was the agoraphobia which may or may not be settling in. I had a panic attack in a shop in North Carolina, I was convinced someone in there was going to speak to me - WHICH I DID NOT WANT. I don't know why. I just desperately did not want them to talk to me.

I also felt overwhelmingly like I did not know how to BE in a shop.

Which makes no sense. I realize this. I didn't know........how to shop. What I was supposed to be doing. And I felt like everyone was staring at me.

It also happened at Walmart with the exception that I KNEW how to be at Walmart, I just again was gripped by the sense that everyone was staring at me, and that someone was going to speak to me.



So I went to my OBGYN yesterday and he asked me how I was and I rather burst into tears.



And he said "Yeah,that's what I thought. I could tell you weren't yourself when I walked in."



So I walked out with a prescription for Lexapro which has a list of side effects a mile long. And while he said it's the consensus that it's safe to take while you breastfeed - the bottle says DO NOT TAKE WHILE BREASTFEEDING and let's face it, how BRIGHT could it possibly be to take on the off chance it could even slightly alter my beautiful girl?



I'm supposed to be aware when driving or using heavy machinery. NO FORKLIFT FOR ME!



I haven't taken any yet.



Because...........



I don't want to.



I WILL take them. I just have to get my mind around it. I used to work at a place where EVERY SINGLE FEMALE PEER was on some sort of anti-depressant. It was more fashionable than the FGWP at Clinique. I have always held fast to the belief that being depressed was a signal to make changes, to examine your life and do what you needed to do to improve - NOT TO MEDICATE YOURSELF.

And yeah, I do realize that some people are truly chemically imbalanced. But I don't think we all can be.



So I dunno what to think. I had a good day at work. I wasn't scared or worried while I was there. I came home reasonably happy and I'm holding the small pink love of my life in my arms. (Not to be confused with the small blue loves of my life or the larger blue love of my life).



But....I realize I need something. I'm not right. Dear god no one should get nervous at the Walmart - except from the sight of the damn PEOPLE of Walmart, not the place.



So.....this should be interesting. To say the least.



I leave you, with a vid of my big boy - jousting at the Renn Faire.

The One Where I Join the Herd

In what I consider to be a very annoying turn of events, I've been diagnosed with post-partum depression.

Truth be told, I pretty much already knew I had it. My complete disinterest in everything in the world, my lack of interest in blogging, my lack of desire for changing my clothes for days on end - yeah - I'm not an idiot. I knew I was wallowing in depression. Then there was the agoraphobia which may or may not be settling in. I had a panic attack in a shop in North Carolina, I was convinced someone in there was going to speak to me - WHICH I DID NOT WANT. I don't know why. I just desperately did not want them to talk to me.

I also felt overwhelmingly like I did not know how to BE in a shop.

Which makes no sense. I realize this. I didn't know........how to shop. What I was supposed to be doing. And I felt like everyone was staring at me.

It also happened at Walmart with the exception that I KNEW how to be at Walmart, I just again was gripped by the sense that everyone was staring at me, and that someone was going to speak to me.



So I went to my OBGYN yesterday and he asked me how I was and I rather burst into tears.



And he said "Yeah,that's what I thought. I could tell you weren't yourself when I walked in."



So I walked out with a prescription for Lexapro which has a list of side effects a mile long. And while he said it's the consensus that it's safe to take while you breastfeed - the bottle says DO NOT TAKE WHILE BREASTFEEDING and let's face it, how BRIGHT could it possibly be to take on the off chance it could even slightly alter my beautiful girl?



I'm supposed to be aware when driving or using heavy machinery. NO FORKLIFT FOR ME!



I haven't taken any yet.



Because...........



I don't want to.



I WILL take them. I just have to get my mind around it. I used to work at a place where EVERY SINGLE FEMALE PEER was on some sort of anti-depressant. It was more fashionable than the FGWP at Clinique. I have always held fast to the belief that being depressed was a signal to make changes, to examine your life and do what you needed to do to improve - NOT TO MEDICATE YOURSELF.

And yeah, I do realize that some people are truly chemically imbalanced. But I don't think we all can be.



So I dunno what to think. I had a good day at work. I wasn't scared or worried while I was there. I came home reasonably happy and I'm holding the small pink love of my life in my arms. (Not to be confused with the small blue loves of my life or the larger blue love of my life).



But....I realize I need something. I'm not right. Dear god no one should get nervous at the Walmart - except from the sight of the damn PEOPLE of Walmart, not the place.



So.....this should be interesting. To say the least.



I leave you, with a vid of my big boy - jousting at the Renn Faire.