&*%^$%^%&*

well, crap.




was doing ok, appreciating a household running like a well-oiled machine, appreciating a level of civility and courtesy in the house that has made interactions between Skipper and myself actually enjoyable.

then it all went to shit last night. PMS. damn it. combine that with a lousy recipe for date-nut cookies, little sleep (duckie up at 12:30 then 3:30, i'm up at 5:30 but at least i managed to do the dishes and catch a shower), and i'm a fucking MESS.

i really don't want to up my meds. i'm scared that eventually they will stop working, then where do i go? this is an issue i will have to deal with my entire life, so i have to look at it long-term.

buffy suggested that a low dose of birth control might help with the monthly hormonal shifts - if i wasn't planning to get pregnant anytime soon, that is. and i suppose that's an issue now - we had a timetable in mind, but we decided to put it on the back burner until things with skipper stabilized.

we haven't really revisited the subject. maybe next week we'll get a chance to - skip's going back out to the beach for a doctor visit and he'll be gone for about a week. so once things get stable, they change again. and then we have to deal with adjusting all over again once he gets back. not to mention that duckie's going to be pissed not to have her papa at at her disposal 24/7.

what the hell was i talking about? oh that's right; i was bitching about something or other.

********************

have you seen the commercials for the pre-cut christmas cookies yet? nestle tollhouse has pre-cut refrigerated cookie dough that you just pull off the plastic and onto the cookie sheet. now i know as well as anyone that time is pretty critical around the holidays (being up to my elbows in flour and sugar every evening probably doesn't help that) but COME ON. i won't call you lazy if you choose to use such a product, but i will strongly encourage you to at least buy the sugar cookie dough in a roll and roll it flat yourself, cut shapes, decorate, etc. because part of the fun of sugar cookies and other shaped, rolled cookies is that feeling of accomplishment - "wow, that cookie's awesome, i ought to do a couple more like that." or "ok that one's just fugly, i better take one for the team and eat it now before anyone sees it." or, "duckie, that's great - you did a fantastic job with those ornaments - no, let's wait until later to eat them, you've already had three."

i don't have time to do gingerbread people this year, which is fine. i have plenty of fun cutting out and decorating your garden-variety christmas shapes. i'd love to do a gingerbread house when duckie's older and can help - and at some point i'll have to go see the houses at the Grove Park Inn. but you don't have to do everything in one year, i've discovered. you don't have to do gingerbread people. you don't have to make lavender eye masks for all your friends. you don't have to make homemade pasta. you don't even have to make all those damned cookies, or buy the dress-up shoes and the tricycle you had your heart set on for your daughter. (it's not like she's going without for christmas this year, and the weather won't be exactly ideal for tricycling for a few months. no big deal.)

i don't have to do everything this year, and i continue to remind myself every single day. it's really easy to go overboard during the holidays - and a predisposition to hypomania doesn't help matters.

ok, then. blogging helped. thanks for your patience. hope your various and sundry countdowns are going well, and more-or-less as planned.