Showing off my ignorance

As I watched this news clip this morning, I found myself thinking. (Always a dangerous pastime.) And I realized there's a lot of room for religious diversity in America, and I'm thankful for the church I'm in. Apart from the fact that to join the church of the Nazarene one only needs to agree to "Jesus, Son of God, Saviour," I'm not good at conformity.

Reasons I'd make a terrible Amish person:
I'm posting this on the Internet.
After this I'm going to check my e-mail, watch a couple of videos, and sing along with the radio as I drive to work.
The bonnets are cute, but I'd have a really hard time growing my hair out.
I love buttons!
I can't sew.
Just because I know how to cook on a wood stove doesn't mean I want to.
Attending school only until eigth grade is so 1800s... wait a second...
If orange traffic triangles on the buggy are "too showy," I'm guessing glitter is off the list. (Kudos to the neighbor for politely and concisely explaining to the reporter why this was an issue important enough that people were willing to invoke their right to civil disobedience and go to jail over.)
Add more in the comments if you think of them!

Shirley the Platypus!

I haven't been posting many pictures of the Mimi lately. That's because she spends most days running around in only her underpants. While we don't mind as long as she follows some basic ground rules (if someone comes over you must put on clothing, you must wear clothes to leave the house, etc.) it has cut down on the number of pictures we've taken of her.

She dressed up as Perry the Platypus for Halloween. (I crocheted the hat, and the rest is a matching teal sweatsuit.)

Now, not only is that costume the only outfit she's willing to wear, but she's claimed Perry as her imaginary friend. They're currently playing hide and seek in the living room. ( I drew the line when she claimed that Perry wanted chocolate for lunch.)

Cheaper than Xanax

I've started up a new/old hobby--counted cross stitch. When I was a child, family members would give me cross stitch kits for every birthday, Christmas, etc. I really enjoyed cross stitch, but since I had serious problems with the whole "counted" part of it, none of my projects turned out well. 

Beguiled by the prospect of amazing projects like this one, I've taken it up again. (I've never felt the need for zebra skin rug before, but I do now!) So far I'm working on a very simple geometric rug for a dollhouse and it's turning out well.

If my hubris led me to overestimate my needlepoint skills and I fail at it, it'll be okay. I may spend 30 hours working on something which is best used to wrap up catnip and make a very decorative cat toy. It's a soothing, relaxing craft (profanity? How dare you blankety blank blank suggest that I should moderate my language?!) and way cheaper than most of my meds.

Feelin' like a redneck

When we were in SF, one of the guys at church asked me "What is your ethnicity?"
And I relplied that while there's some Germans, Poles, and Native Americans in my family history, "I'd have to describe my cultural group as "redneck."" And for the most part, that's still very true.

Brian is pastoring again, and he's very happy about it. It's obvious that he's really missed having a place to serve. He's now associate pastor at an area church. (And we didn't even have to move. Yippeee!)

Our new church has a large Native American population. About half the church either is affiliated with a tribe, or related to/married to tribal members. And just like in Nome and San Francisco, I have to accept that there's a lot of things I just won't understand because this isn't my culture. But sometimes it gets kind of perplexing...

One Sunday as I was dealing with the very social Mimi's desire to run all over the church and "talk to my people, Mama!" I heard a voice behind me.

"Hellooo, my Native American friend!" It was the woman who was greeting people at the door, who identifies herself as Chocktaw and Cherokee.
I looked in the direction she was facing and saw that she was talking to the chairwoman of the Grand Ronde Tribal Council! Apparently this is a running gag between the two of them.

Fun with telemarketers

We get calls from telemarketers all the time. When it's a recorded message "robo-call" we hang up immediately, but if the company cares enough to hire real people to solicit our money, then we can care enough to use a little creativity as we tell them no. Sometims our excuses are even true.

"Hi, we're collecting funds for the Oregon Special Olympics--"
"We get all kinds of weird phone calls that are phishing scams, so I'm sure you can understand if I'm a bit skeptical. There's a gal at my work who is really a coach for a Special Olympics basketball team, so I'm just going to give her money.""But the Oregon Special Olympics--"
"Is a great organization. But because I'm not sure if you actually will give them money, I'm going to give ten bucks to Chrissy at work, because she will." [click]

"Hi, this is Your Current Bank, and--"
"Really? It's eight o'clock at night here. You've always been nine-to-five people. I had no idea you'd extended your hours."
"We wanted to make sure you knew about our life insurance division..."
"Curent Insurance Company has been good to us, and we really like them. They always send us those little pocket appointment  books every Christmas."
"We have life insurance, and if you sign up now the first month's premium is free! It's a limited time offer..."
"You called in the middle of my daughter's bedtime routine, so my time is limited too." [click]

"Hello, this is the Oregon State Police Chief's Association, and we're raising money for our campaign against methamphetamine."
"Meth?! That's where all my business comes from!"
"Um, okay...We're trying to make neighborhoods safer and limit the damage meth is doing to our communities."
Belatedly, the though occurs to me that this one may actually be legitimate. "You actually are calling from the Police Chief's Association?"
"Yes, and can we count on your support this year?
"I'm sure you have promotional material to mail us. Send it to us and we'll think about it."

Quote of the week

"Unfortunately the Ativan I took to deal with my anxiety about going to meetings has made me sleepy during this meeting and that makes me anxious," I overheard one of my co-workers say at the weekly staff meeting yesterday.

And that pretty much sums up my experiences with antidepressants. The trick seems to be finding a medication whose side effects don't mess up my life worse than the depression does.

However, I am back to knitting. I've been working on several pairs of socks based on variants of the modular hexagon pattern in the "Think Outside the Sox" book. It's nice to be at least somewhat back to my usual routine.

When I'm in this mood, yarn is just expensive string

I've been having a bit of a funk lately. And when I say "funk" I mean "the blues, but without the catchy music."

One of the bad things about a depressive episode (apart from the appetite and sleep disturbances, the thoughts of guilt and hopelessness, etc.) is that I lose interest in some of my hobbies. I'm still spinning yarn, but I've lost all interest in knitting at the moment. Sure, it looks like fun, but I just can't find the energy to care about it.

It may be a bit before I find the time/energy/motivation to get back to blogging regularly. It may be even longer before I can write anything that I consider clever enough to be worth posting on the blog.

In the mean time, I'm keeping in close contact with my mental health person and doing what I tell my patients to do: keep going to therapy and keep taking your perscriptions, because it works eventually. 

And if it's not working enough and you can't get ahold of your doc/therapist and you're thinking of harming yourself, go to the local ER or call 1-800-SUICIDE or 1-800-273-TALK, both numbers of the National Suicide Hotline in the US.