Just Kristin

Saw it, liked it a lot. I have to say, how­ever, that I can’t imag­ine, even with the expe­ri­ences I’ve had, want­ing to erase the mem­o­ries of any­one from my mind. Learn­ing to ben­e­fit from the sor­rows of loss, gain­ing strength from being hurt.…these would become impos­si­ble. If you truly erased a per­son from your mem­o­ries, you would also erase count­less “life lessons” (to use a very Dr. Phil-ish term). Still, a well done film. Mov­ing and sadly hope­ful. Go see it. Now.

Ok, I obvi­ously will not do this each time D deigns to post on his blog, but it has been long enough to war­rant a bit of spot­light­ing and applause. He would post the most freak­ish pic­ture of Mana he can find, wouldn’t you know. She looks like the canine incar­na­tion of some evil spirit, ‘cept for her lack of red eyes. Wel­come back, D! :)

Rea­sons to keep Canada in mind just in case of dis­as­ter in November.

While I am not at all against the use of anti­de­pres­sant drugs when war­ranted (but rather their overuse, that ultra-American abil­ity to always strive for too much of a good thing, too quickly and with all ease), I have to won­der about a few things:

• Either there sim­ply are that many peo­ple in the U.S. suf­fer­ing from depres­sion severe enough to war­rant med­ica­tion, or the physician/pharmaceutical com­pany love-in offers a finan­cial pay-off big enough for both par­ties involved to let go of ethics and oaths:
  

  More Amer­i­cans are seek­ing help for depres­sion than did so a decade ago, but they’re pop­ping more pills and spend­ing less time on the couch, a new study says.
  Researchers found the num­ber of peo­ple who received out­pa­tient treat­ment for mood trou­ble jumped from 1.7 mil­lion in 1987 to 6.3 mil­lion in 1997. Dur­ing that time, the share of those tak­ing anti­de­pres­sant drugs more than dou­bled, while the share of those receiv­ing psy­chother­apy fell by more than 10 per­cent.
  Experts say those trends reflect the con­flu­ence of sev­eral fac­tors: an increased aware­ness of depres­sion as a cur­able dis­ease, along with a grad­ual shed­ding of the stig­mas asso­ci­ated with it; drug com­pa­nies’ aggres­sive pro­mo­tion of new anti­de­pres­sants, such as Prozac and Zoloft; and a gen­eral effort by health insur­ers to encour­age patients to see pri­mary care doc­tors instead of more expen­sive spe­cial­ists.
  [taken from More Drugs, Fewer Couches Used to Treat Depres­sion]

• Too many Amer­i­cans are tak­ing such med­ica­tions as a sub­sti­tute for, rather than a sup­port to, the more long-term cura­tives such as ther­apy, exer­cise, healthy diet, med­i­ta­tion, etc.
  

  Olf­son, of Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity and the New York State Psy­chi­atric Insti­tute, and his col­leagues reviewed patient records from 1987 and 1997, cov­er­ing a total of more than 67,000 peo­ple. They found the rate of out­pa­tient treat­ment for depres­sion rose from 0.73 per 100 peo­ple to 2.33 per 100 peo­ple.
  Anti­de­pres­sant use dou­bled dur­ing the period, from 37 per­cent to nearly 75 per­cent of patients, but the share of those who sought psy­chother­apy fell, from 71 per­cent to 60 per­cent. In absolute terms, though, the num­ber of patients receiv­ing psy­chother­apy rose across the decade.
  [taken from More Drugs, Fewer Couches Used to Treat Depres­sion]

• The insur­ance com­pa­nies (for lack of a bet­ter term; “health care provider” sure as hell doesn’t fit) will always press for the cheap­est way out, and there­fore even more empha­sis is put on pills, which most likely lose both the insur­ance com­pa­nies and the doc­tors the least amount of money per patient.
• And, as if it weren’t bad enough, we have these new find­ings to deal with.

Good lord, I am froth­ing. I just came from a phys­i­cal today, how­ever, where a doc­tor, totally new to me, imme­di­ately jumped on me for try­ing to work through my depres­sion bol­stered by 5-HTP rather than the “much more well-tested Lexapro” that my psy­chi­a­trist also tries to talk me into, despite my spend­ing time telling both these men that a)5-HTP seems to be help­ing, and b)heavy-duty phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals make me very, very uncom­fort­able. My psy­chol­o­gist, how­ever, sym­pa­thizes, and says that I should do what works for me. All three, how­ever, are right in say­ing that I need to exer­cise. *sigh* The good McDoc explained to me that Euro­peans use more herbal med­ica­tions, and under­stand far more clearly than their depressed U.S. coun­ter­parts that either type of med­ica­tion is best used as a mood sup­port while one works on fix­ing one­self through ther­apy, excer­cise and the like. We Amer­i­cans, how­ever, believ­ing in the supe­ri­or­ity of every­thing Amer­i­can (save that for another rant) our med­ical know-how, eschew the European/Chinese/Native American/any other cul­tural way of doing things sim­ply on prin­ci­ple, and also have a strong desire for instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion. I only hope that between what ever rebel spirit I may have, and the guid­ance I get from those who turn my thoughts and beliefs against them­selves to help me grow, can keep me grow­ing in the most ben­e­fi­cial direction.

I have spent the last month or so get­ting to know myself, and, painful though it may be, I think the process is help­ing me like myself more, believe in myself more, and become able to offer more to oth­ers. Pass me my zafu, my B vit­a­mins and my pedome­ter and get out of my way! :)

Thank you, Tom:

“Between stim­u­lus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our free­dom and power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and free­dom.“
— Vic­tor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

Before I give this recipe, which I do plan to test, per­haps with Mike’s help (since he is the best exper­i­men­tal cook I know per­son­ally), I would love to share the ety­mol­ogy of “dan­de­lion” (com­pli­ments of dictionary.com), the word his­tory that began my love of word his­to­ries:

Dan­de­lion Wine
4 quarts boil­ing water
2 quarts dan­de­lion blos­soms
3 oranges, sliced
3 lemons, sliced
1 yeast cake
4 pounds sugar

Pour boil­ing water over dan­de­lion blos­soms. Let it stand for three days, stir­ring once each day. Strain at the end of the third day. Add oranges and lemons (includ­ing peel), yeast, and sugar. Let it stand an addi­tional three days, stiff­ing once each day. Strain at the end of the third day. Bot­tle and cap. Keep for six months before using.

Taken from The Old-Time New Eng­land Cook­book, pub­lished by Dover Publications

By the way, Dover Thrift is a great source of cheap clas­sics, many not over $2.00!

Am I back? I hope so. I am feel­ing a bit more sure of myself at work, and even a bit more sure of myself…in gen­eral. I’m pro­gress­ing as a work-in-progress, or I am at last real­iz­ing my progress. Not to make it sound like I am no longer a neu­rotic mess, but thanks to the patience of my fam­ily, their unstint­ing belief in me has rubbed off, and I am com­ing to believe in myself. Amaz­ing.

Less abstractly: Smoop is play­ing soft­ball again, fill­ing a lot of our extra hours with prac­tices and games. She is so fun to watch, so taken with the game, so “there” when she plays. I envy her her focus. I haven’t had that kind of single-mindedness since I was a musi­cian. Syn­dromes blogs more reg­u­larly than the rest of us, and has been a great source of it’s-not-just-you-style com­fort to me. D still likes his job a lot, but has ceased to blog *hint hint*. Waga­hai is hap­pier than I have seen him in a while…not that he is ever less than opti­mistic, the bas­tard. The Rev is a con­stant source of inspi­ra­tion to me as he makes his own progress, and lots of it. Mom is still work­ing to find her place (as are we all). Myf seems to have found her place more than any­one I’ve ever met. Congratulations!

I, on the other hand, have fin­ished one poetry course thru UCSD exten­sion, and have started another via UW Madi­son online. I look for­ward to get­ting more involved in what­ever writ­ing com­mu­nity can be found in San Diego. I also plan to start walk­ing for exer­cise, with the intent of walk­ing 10000 steps a day, along with at least D, who jumped at the idea, as well as any­one else who wants to join in…I know that the Rev was inter­ested a while ago…Rev, you up to some walks when we have time? How about some hikes, Syn­dromes, Lax­ity? Smoo, you still gonna let me catch with you? Bug me, k, y’all? Any­way, I am going to start by walk­ing the San Diego Walk for Recov­ery. I also plan to talk to some­one about get­ting back into school. I have also started search­ing for a zen cen­ter to visit reg­u­larly, and have got­ten back into the swing of my weekly vis­its to the Vedanta soci­ety with the Rev.

Wow. I am not doing very well writ­ing and work­ing and watch­ing TV all at the same time. I should give up.

Every­one should sub­scribe. Ok, well, maybe not every­one, but I have been enjoy­ing this mag­a­zine, cover to cover, from issue #1. One of my favorite arti­cles is on their web­site, along with oth­ers like:

• the past per­fect pillow
• sprout a sod couch
• how did you get that f*&%ing awe­some job?, and
• eat­ing off the floor: the five-second rule revisited

I’ve been read­ing them through from cover to cover since the beginning.…

Here are the mag­a­zines, for the record, that I read almost cover to cover:

• Ready Made
• Bitch
• Bust
• Bizarre
• All Round
• Utne Reader

I am sure there are more, because I sub­scribe to quite a few, but I can’t think of any right at the moment.

I know that I have been rather absent lately, and I do feel a come­back sneak­ing up on me, but a few more days (at least) on these meds will be needed, I’m afraid. Until then, let me share a few of the neat things I’ve found in var­i­ous places while I engage in a lot of escapism:

• David Sedaris: Live at Carnegie Hall, a cd of Sedaris reading/performing some of his fun­ni­est essays. Any­thing by Sedaris is hilar­i­ous, though. I was lucky enough to see him in per­son at Bor­ders in Mis­sion Valley.

• You Are Here, a col­lec­tion of var­i­ous maps…maps of any– and every­thing. Fascinating!
• Christ­mas lights as beaded door­way cur­tains, and
• A coat rack made of one’s old Christ­mas tree with all but some branches left, sawed off short, and the whole thing painted — no need to even take it out of the stand!
• Gomi NYC, a neato source for recy­cled stuff made into cool stuff
• Hell, Ready Made, one of the finest mag­a­zines around — when Martha starts show­ing us crafts and recipes that take less than three days and/or a month’s salary to make, maybe I’ll take her seri­ously. Until then, these guys even teach us how to make absinthe…
• Book­sense: sup­port your local inde­pen­dent book­sellers, dammit!

See, Syn­dromes? (sheesh!) I’ll do any­thing you say… :P Actu­ally, I wish there had been a set mark­ing for things one wasn’t sure of… Oh, well.

RULES:
1. Put your birth month in an entry.
2. <strike>Strike out</strike> any­thing that doesn’t apply to you.
3. <b>Bold</b> the four that best apply to you.
4. List all twelve months and rules for oth­ers to use.

MAY:
Stub­born and hard-hearted. Strong-willed and highly moti­vated. Sharp thoughts. Eas­ily angered. Attracts oth­ers and loves atten­tion. Deep feel­ings. Beau­ti­ful phys­i­cally and men­tally. Firm Stand­point. Needs no moti­va­tion. Eas­ily con­soled. Sys­tem­atic (left brain). Loves to dream. Strong clair­voy­ance. Under­stand­ing. Sick­ness usu­ally in the ear and neck. Good imag­i­na­tion. Good phys­i­cal. Weak breath­ing. Loves lit­er­a­ture and the arts. Loves trav­el­ing. Dis­like being at home. Rest­less. Not hav­ing many chil­dren. Hardwork­ing. High spir­ited. Spend­thrift.

What about you? All the months are listed in full below.
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