Depression sucks.
Same shit, different day.
I could of course, attribute my unshakable malaise by chalking it up to the horrible weather or the interminable dark that pervades this time of year. Usually my mood improves when the holidays are over, at least a little bit, and then goes back in the toilet around mid-February until about May.
Maybe it’s because my life is pretty much lived stuffing ten pounds of shit into a five pound bag. The worst part of that is that it’s usually ten pounds of other people’s shit that I allow to be unloaded on me.
The sucky part of that is that one of my closest friends (who I really need to have a nice, long conversation with again, and sometime soon) once told me that life boils down to what you cause and what you allow. I allow other people’s dumb shit to go on and on without telling them to piss off, and that’s my own damned fault. I hear a lot of bitching through the course of a day, and a lot of it is in regard to things that either I can’t control or can’t change. Hearing all that day in and day out tends to make me feel pretty discouraged and hopeless.
Then I go home and get to hear Jerry bitch about things that he should just deal with himself if they bother him that much. This is the same guy who has no problem spotting shit or puke or some unfortunate object that Lucy has reduced to smithereens- but who does have nine kinds of excuses for why he can’t clean it up.
Really? I so need this amazing shit-shoveling gnome in my house!
That, and my left arm is killing me right around the place where I broke it. I think that might be because of the cold (it’s a balmy 1°F out there today) and low barometer, but it hurts something fierce today. I dug out the big black brace I had to use for awhile after they took my cast off, and put it on, which seems to help. Then there’s always the gift that keeps on giving- all my joints are rather creaky and stiff today- thanks to the lingering repercussions of rheumatic fever. The good news is that I was one of about three people in the pool this morning. I’d be much worse off today, at least as far as mobility goes, had I not gone to the pool. The pool, opposed to the outside world, is usually somewhere around 80°, which is quite nice.
If money were no object, this would be my personal indoor pool.
And here would be a suitable personal pool boy.
Maybe not so blond, but the bod is right on. Nice pecs.
It would be a total blast to lounge about in a lovely pool surrounded by buff young dudes, if I had the means, but as the old saying goes, “Wish in one hand, shit in the other, and see which one fills up first.”
Of course the fantasy would only be complete if I could have a big screen TV in my pool room showing Journey’s Greatest Hits Live 1981:
Play ALL. All night long.
Believe it or not, I’ve actually done a fairly decent job of cheering myself up. For now.
Please, Lord, don’t let me come home to a massive debris field left in the wake of the “Mouth of the South” (aka Lucy) because Jerry was too lazy to put the dogs back in their crates after lunch…
Or to a to-do list of Jerry’s errands to be ran (outside of course,) in sub-zero temperatures…
Give a poor white woman a break for a change, eh? A quiet night with maybe a few military documentaries, or even a showing of Hot Fuzz or Super Troopers? It doesn’t even have to be a cop-themed movie- Borat would do just fine… something funny, something light?
ELYSIANHUNTER, ALWAYS INCITEFUL: 
I’m glad you managed to cheer yourself up. And I’m also glad you got to swim in relative peace. I love to swim, and I rarely get to do it. We had a public pool in my town when I was a kid, and on Friday nights, EVERYBODY would be there, but it’s gone now.
You say: “I allow other people’s dumb shit to go on and on without telling them to piss off.” That’s certainly true, but it’s only part of the picture. Whether or not you tell them to piss off, you don’t have any control over what they do–and sometimes, assholes are gonna be assholes. But you DO have control over how you choose to respond. From what you’ve said, I gather the opinions of many of these guys don’t mean much to you, so why should you care when they bitch at you? You can’t stop a bitch from bitching, but you can hear that bitching as the sound the adults make on a Charlie Brown special (“WAAA WAAA WAAAWAAA).
You are preaching to the choir on that one. It is also amazingly freeing and empowering to refuse to take the blame for other people’s stupid mistakes, i.e. just because I went to an evening class at church last night does not mean I am responsible for Jerry going to the hell hole across the road, getting wasted and blowing all his money. Even though he tries to blame that stupidity on me, the bottom line is drinking and gambling are his bad decisions and nothing I do or fail to do will prevent him from doing stupid things. I used to get right on that blame train- but not any more.
It sort of reminds me of what Smokey the Bear said back in the 70’s- “Only you can prevent forest fires.” Only Jerry can decide to pull his head out of his ass and act like an adult. I am not able to prevent or mitigate his bad behavior, and the only way he will ever stop it is if he grows a pair and starts taking responsibility for his own stupidity. In the meanwhile, I refuse to own any responsibility for his stupid behavior OR do anything to make it easier for him to avoid the consequences of said stupidity.
My mental health is always better when I realize that when it comes to the actions of others, all I can do is pretty much stand back and watch the show.