Staycation

As you may have noticed, I haven't felt very chatty lately. I have not even checked e-mail in about a week, a mind boggling concept, I know.

It's been a rough holiday season. I took some time off work, since I still had some vacation days left, and that yielded a nice stretch of 12 days away from the office (including holidays). Tomorrow is my first day back at work, which is sort of giving me a flashback to last January, and my disability leave.

Although I had many grandiose plans for tidying up my apartment during my staycation (stop that gaffawing right now -- I can hear you all from here) in reality, it was just a much needed mental health break -- that is, I spent much of the time having a nice little nervous collapse. (Put it this way: I now have strategic stashes of Kleenex in all 3 rooms of my apartment.)

Thanks to copious amounts of sleep at Mom's the last 2 nights (20 hours in 2 nights! yes!) and a new Rx of antidepressants on the 31st (Lexapro, which I really need to read up on soon, I suppose) which should not interfere with the tamoxifen that I have yet to start taking, I feel considerably more human.

Yes, being completely off meds while dealing with hormonal insanity, family stress (my brother-in-law is really, REALLY, not doing well, and so things are very difficult for my sister), tri-state holiday logistics, turning 42, post-treatment side effects (guess what? those will linger all year, oh yay), and insomnia (it doesn't seem fair to get both lethargy and insomnia when you're depressed) well, I will spare you all the soggy details of my wild mood swings except to say that I am glad to be within sight of equilibrium.

True, there were fun and warm and fuzzy moments within the past few weeks (Xmas with both sets of families), but I am just not feeling particularly communicative (see: depressed, above). Just wanted to let you all know I'm still alive, and regaining my sanity.

And now I leave you with some amusing photos of misprints from the Despair.com calendar gifted to me remotely by my friend Laura (she ordered it while stationed abroad). The top photo shows the original placement of Martin Luther King Jr Day (um, no, not usually on a Wednesday -- if you click on the photo, you can probably read their snarky disclaimer) and the bottom shot shows the "After" shot, using the cover up sticker supplied by Despair. Heh. Since it is my first post of the year, I thought a nod to a 2010 calendar was appropriate, no?