So I went to my coffee shop yesterday. I’m a regular there, and friends with most of the employees (shout out to all my peeps at Solid Grounds).

And there was a pair of teenagers, probably freshmen or sophomores, who were in the back booth “studying”. And by studying, I mean licking one another’s vocal cords. I suppose I should say it’s a big booth. It easily seats six people, eight if you’re friendly.

By the time I got there they were actually doing something or other with graphing calculators and geometry or trig, though naturally they were sitting practically on top of one another, because you can’t actually do homework without touching your boyfriend with two limbs and half your torso. But at least they weren’t making out any more.

But Mike and Angela had been forced to endure them for several hours.

So Mike offered me $10 if I’d just go over and ask if I could join them at the table, then sit down and start typing–with a straight face. Also, if they asked why, I had to say, “Well there aren’t that many tables open.” (There were tons of tables.)

And then Angela threw in a free drink to sweeten the deal. How could I say no?

So I waited at the little “get your drink here” counter while Angela made me a caramel apple cider, and when I got the drink I just turned around and said, “Do you guys mind if I sit here?” And I put my drink on the table and set down my bag before they even took a breath.

They said, “Uhhh… okay. We’re going to be leaving soon anyway.”

At which point a normal person would, you know, find another table and wait for them to leave.

Not me!

I just said, “Oh, that’s great! Thanks!” And I sat down and pulled out my AlphaSmart and started typing, trying not to look at them because if I did I would have busted up laughing and lost my $10.

I was typing things like, “I can’t do this out loud but I really need to laugh so I’m laughing in type HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.”

But according to eyewitnesses (there were three who were avidly watching) the kids were giving me very strange looks, because by then there was the “oooh, awkward…” vibe, and they’d looked around and seen that there were TONS of tables open. And there I was, typing away as if this was perfectly normal.

They left less than 3 minutes later, and we all barely lasted until the door closed behind them before we busted up laughing.

Good times, good times.

Maybe not as fun as the duck joke, but definitely very satisfying. It’s great fun to be the strange person that no one knows how to deal with. :-D

That’s right. My birth certificate actually reads “Elizabeth Delinquent Wright”. What can I say? My parents clearly had a lot of foresight on the issue.

In my defense, I haven’t done much worth talking about in the last two and a half weeks or so. There’s been work and church and Bible studies and possible changes with Matt’s work situation that I’m not allowed to talk about, but which will probably be good for everyone involved. I’m getting to know a new friend better, and enjoying that. I’ve gotten several tests to check things out with my heart, which was doing some semi-alarming things, and it seems like everything looks fine. I’ve got to set up an appointment with my doctor to discuss things further and see what she recommends.

It was 75 degrees last Wednesday, and then we got about two feet of slushy rain/snow between midnight Thursday and noon Saturday. . . and it was pretty much all gone again by Monday, thanks to temps jumping back up until the 70s with great sunshine. I love Colorado in the spring.

We took Shiloh to the Chatfield dog park on Monday afternoon, and she had a fabulous time. I’ll try to remember to take the camera next time so I can get some photos. She’s still as cute as ever.

I’ve been discouraged about writing, mostly because I still haven’t been able to get my brain to truly focus. I’m not sure why, but it’s really frustrating.

And now I’m going to stop before you all get depressed. Stay tuned for a funny story! No, seriously. Funny story. Next entry! Just a few minutes away! YAY!

Today is April 6th. I always notice when this date comes around, though I haven’t mentioned it to many people.

Four years ago, my grandmother died. She was terribly special to me, and I still miss her. In the months following her death, I often found myself thinking I ought to call and tell her this or that, or that I would put it in my next letter, and it always came as a shock that I couldn’t. It still happens from time to time, but nowhere near as often.

There have been a lot of changes in the family in the last four years–marriages, babies, cross-country moves. Life moves forward and takes us with it. The missing is no longer sharp and sudden, but gentle, savored because it also brings memories of traveling and sitting up close at the opera and her exclamations when I described a teammate’s injuries while playing Ultimate frisbee, and the day when she wouldn’t hug me because my dyed hair and painted face alarmed her.

Yes, that really is me.

I don’t think I’ve posted a picture of her before, so here’s one I’ve always liked. I was showing her plans for a quilt.

Three years ago, I wrote a piece in memory of her life, and I read it again every year. In case you’re interested, here it is:

In memoriam

My grandmother died a year ago today. I have not yet attempted to put my thoughts and feelings into words, though the pen or the computer is my preferred method of expression in most cases. At times I question whether I have truly grieved for her, but more often there is a quiet acceptance of her absence. I miss her painfully, at times. I miss her interest and her wisdom. I miss being able to write her letters. I miss sharing my life with her, and hearing her excitement about my crazy ideas. But I also know that she is in a much better place, and I will see her again. I know that she knows about my crazy ideas and is still excited about them.

Let me tell you about her.
Read the rest of this entry »

Okay, folks, it’s update time.

I’ve spent most of the day cleaning my desk, which might sound to some people like the job of an hour or so, but those people have not witnessed my desk. When I’m done entirely, I’ll take a photo and you can all ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ at how lovely and clean it is.

In the meanwhile, Bob2 seems to be faring well. I’d post a photo, but it would look pretty much like all the other ones you’ve seen of Bob2 thus far, so that seems silly.

Shiloh has been a bit neglected lately, in the sense that Matt and I have both been either too busy or too disinclined to brave the cold temperatures in order to take her out for a proper walk or run around the park. But she makes do with running around the house like a demon with one or the other of her toys in her mouth. She also spends a great deal of time looking out the window, now that she can both see out a window and look at something (the parking lot) which is interesting at least some of the time.

Notice that the ledge is at just the right height for her to rest her chin there while she watches. Very convenient.

I took this one this morning when she was playing with her squeaky bowling pin. The body has a nice duck-call noise when you squeeze it, and the rubber’s tough enough to take her chewing for more than five minutes without falling apart.

So that’s what’s going on in the Whitt home today.

Aussie writer Colin Rowsell has posted an excellent entry in his blog about depression and its effects on writers. There’s already a great conversation happening in the comments of the entry, but many people are spreading the word on their own blogs as well. I thought, since I’ve dealt with depression quite a bit and talked about it a few times here, that it was a great opportunity.

I’d recommend reading the original post to get the full context, but you can just go ahead to my answers to the questions he posed if you prefer.

WHAT TO DO:

* Read the questions below.
* Choose some (by no means necessarily all) that you’d like to answer.
* Either write into the comments section, or email Colin privately on (if you email, I will respect your privacy to any extent you want, the default is complete anonymity)
* If you like, add a tiny bit about yourself – eg ‘I’m a 22 yr old female aspiring writer’, ‘I’m 46 years old, used to be an emu farmer, and have 3 books in print’, etc. Also add any further advice that isn’t covered under the questions.
Finally, tell anyone you know who might be interested in being part of the conversation – the further we can retweet and link this, the better it’ll get.

For anyone who’s not acquainted with me, I’m a 26 year old female, pursuing publication. I’ve got a husband, a dog, and a cactus, and I have a bachelor’s in Music (voice) and a master’s in Writing Popular Fiction from Eastern and Seton Hill Universities, respectively. There’s a history of depression in both sides of my family.

Depression

1. What is depression?
It’s walking around in circles through hip-deep, sucking mud, just to figure out what to have for lunch.

2. How is it different from just having a bad day?
There’s no reason for it–there might be a trigger event, but there’s nothing solid to point to like, “My boss has been hounding me unfairly all month.” It’s just there.

3. What does it feel like on the inside?
For me? All my thoughts get tangled and move in circles. I’ve got a lot of things to accomplish, but I don’t have everything I need to start the first one and the second one will take a long time and I probably won’t get anything done and really I’m incapable of finishing ANYTHING so I might as well lie on the couch and watch the same movie over and over all day. I can’t process conversations, I can’t even follow printed directions. I tend to forget to eat, and if I do remember, it’s often not worth the trouble of making all those decisions about what to have and how to fix it.

4. What can it look like from the outside, i.e. from the perspective of friends/acquaintances?
I think sometimes it looks like I need more sleep, but I learned very early on how to have a “normal person” mask in public, so I doubt many people even notice. My husband is very familiar with my warning signs, though, and so is my mom, and they are both good about stepping in.

Personal Experience

5. In what way is depression a part of your life?
It’s like my hair. It’s a part of me, it sprouts back even if I were to try to shave it off. Some days are great, and it cooperates. Other days, it’s a miracle to pull things together enough to go out in public without drawing stares. If I take care of it, it does better, but there are still good days and bad days.

6. If you live with depression, how/when did you first realise it? Was there a formal diagnosis at some point?
I didn’t realize it at the time, but in retrospect I can identify my first major depressive episode nine years ago, during my freshman year of college. Since then, I’ve been at a fairly constant low level of chronic depression with several other severe episodes scattered about. I self-diagnosed six years ago, after the second major episode (four months), and with my husband’s help self-treated until a year ago, when I went to a doctor, got officially diagnosed, and got meds for it.

7. What were some early experiences with depression that had an impact?
Isolation, forgetting to eat (I look at photos from that time and realize how very, very thin I was), ruining relationships (family, friends, boyfriend). Once I identified the initial symptoms of a downward spiral, I set up methods to pull myself back from the edge.

8. If you write, how does it affect your writing?
Well, when I can’t accomplish anything or put together thoughts that run in anything but circles, that’s not a great thing for writing. I’ve learned to allow myself down time as a natural part of my productivity, and to find other things to occupy my time instead of retreating to thinking about how little I’m ever going to get done and how useless it would even be to try.

9. What have you found useful for coping? What’s NOT useful?
Finding activities in which I get tangible evidence of progress–quilting is great, because at the end of each step, I have stacks of Things I Got Done staring me in the face. A long walk outside, preferably in the sun, also definitely helps. Allowing my husband to make plans with good friends and then dragging me along can help turn around my mindset by the end of the evening. My medication has done wonders for my chronic depression–but it took thinking about it as a medical condition, like diabetes, that has to be treated regularly and seriously before I caved and went to the doctor. But there are still greater fluctuations that I have to be aware of even when I’m consistent with remembering my meds. Adjusting my expectations so that I work with my depression instead of against it is important, too. NOT useful for me? Watching TV or movies, talking to someone who is being super-productive, “just cheer up, everything will be fine”. Reading is neutral… it does have the advantage of being able to see my progress, but there’s usually a bit of guilt because I feel I *should* have been writing.

Advice

10. What advice would you give to a young person, interested in writing, who’s beginning to realise that depression will be part of their life?
Well I’m not sure that being a writer necessitates having depression, but for the young or new writer who deals with depression, I’d give the same advice as I would to anyone with depression. Know your treatment options, use whatever support networks you have access to (I have one friend whose coworkers are closer than her family in many ways), and make the best informed decisions you can for your own situation. Don’t let depression be an excuse for not doing what you dream of, but don’t kid yourself that it won’t be an obstacle; and know that it might be more of an obstacle for some than for others.