What I Did On Saturday, Plus There Might Be A Free T-Shirt At The End If I Like Your Idea

Not to sound insensitive or anything, but death is a real bummer, so I'm going to switch gears and tell you what I did on Saturday.

Shanan and I went to the University of Regina Theatre Department's costume sale, where we tried on many ridiculous things from medieval wench costumes to skin-tight, fuzzy, blue bear costumes to fluffy hats:



I walked around in this princess outfit for a while until I realized that I looked like an artsy member of the KKK:



I couldn't leave empty-handed, though, so I bought three, yes THREE, of these The Disciples of James Dean jackets:



Then, we went to the farmers' market, where we hmmmed over produce.



I got ripped off by this one vendor again. He's this one particular Hutterite farmer. He'll tell you that it's four dollars for the carrots and five for the corn, and then after you talk to him for a while longer, he'll ask for ten. I give it to him because I like the way his accent turns the word hope into hoop.

Then, Shanan and I went for coffee at Tangerine, and it wasn't one of those namby pamby coffees where we talk about work and hobbies, no. We talked about atheism and the afterlife and the evils of dairy:



I love coffees like that. Something about getting older seems to rob us of the willingness to throw it all out there. We have so many guarded conversations where we talk about everything we agree on, whether it's how nice such and such is or how crappy such and such is, and it's delicious to dig into stuff that, although we want to preface it with you might think I'm crazy, but..., we put it out there anyway.



We're safer than we think we are.



Then, we hit Value Village, where we wondered at what might possess someone to buy a platter commemorating Bridlington:



Not that I've ever been to Bridlington, mind you, and it might be a city worth remembering through pictorial platters. I shouldn't judge just because I don't get the allure of commemorative platters.

I do, though. I'm a jerk sometimes.

And then, because we were trying to go everywhere in one afternoon, we stopped at the Golden Willow to buy buttons for the fantastic vintage coat that fit Shanan and not me because the universe is a sick place that doesn't give me what I want, except for when I find grapefruit jujube slices for free at the till. Then, the universe is less sick and more delicious.



So, in short, Saturday's purchases were, in no particular order: Creamo half & half, Starbucks ground coffee, DayQuil, three ceramic doll heads with two arms, a bag of potatoes, a bag of corn, four bags of carrots, and three The Disciples of James Dean jackets:



I'm not sure what the jackets are for. One just barely fits me, and then there are two smaller ones, so I think I need a small gang of small people who, if they don't hate James Dean, can at least pretend that they like James Dean. And red silk jackets. Bonus points if they can sculpt their hair into pompadours. Motherbumper?

And, because there is no tidy way to wrap this up, BAM! Here's my morning face:



PS. I am getting about ten free t-shirts, and I get to print whatever I want on them. What should I put on them? I'm at a loss. I thought about putting my head on them, only with Mr. T hair, with the line "Quit your jibba jabba!" underneath, but then I worried that his lines mights be trademarked or something.

So, help me out. If I like one of your ideas, you get a free shirt!

I Nearly Became A Giant, Yellow Sun To Beat Back The Winter Depression

Late February/early March has me questioning my sanity every year. I managed my seasonal depression exceptionally well this winter, especially if you take into consideration that it's the first winter of my adult life that I have had to face it sober, and I almost had myself convinced that I going to make it through to late spring without having to consider hiding all the kitchen knives.

I was such a fool.

About a week ago, the sadness, the deep and terrible sadness that eats joy for breakfast and hates baby animals, started to creep in. It was gaining a pretty strong puchase, too, convincing me that I was becoming really very much too fat to leave the house and that the Palinode was feeling unhappily trapped by marriage to his uninspired lump of a spouse and that, seeing as my life is nearly half over, I should give up vain pursuits like plucking my chin hair and shaving the hobbit fur off my disgusting feet.

This hostile psychological takeover wasn't sitting well with me, so I decided that NO WAY WAS MARCH GOING TO EAT MY BRAIN, and I decided to expose myself to rainbow toe socks! and cherry-scented nail polish!



My socks felt cozy and warm , and the nail polish smelled sweet, but I still found myself tearing up at the thought that children grow older and we all die. I obviously needed more of an injection of happiness than rainbow toe socks and and cherry-scented nail polish were bringing me.

This is when my brain took a sharp left turn and screamed WE SHOULD GO BUY SOME YELLOW BRISTLE BOARD AND DRESS UP LIKE A GIANT SUN AND TAKE OUR PICTURE WITH STRANGERS ON THE STREET.

To which I replied SHUT UP.

If it hadn't been below -30°C outside, and if I hadn't been paranoid about handing off my iPhone to strangers to take pictures, and if you lived in Regina, Saskatchewan, you might have seen me dancing up and down 11th Avenue in a giant sun costume acting out THE HAPPY-HAPPY-JOY-JOY-THAT-CAN-BE-OURS-EVEN-IF-WE-HAVE-TO-DRESS-UP-LIKE-GIANT-YELLOW-SUNS-AND-DANCE-ON-THE-STREET DANCE.



This being the first sober February/March of my adult life, I am learning a few things:

1. My past winter depressions were not solely due to my drinking, although it likely did contribute.
2. Drinking cut out a lot of anxiety for me, which is probably why I did it so much.
3. Sobriety can be just as fucked up as being liquored out of my gourd.

I did not end up dressing like a giant yellow sun, though, even though it seemed like one of my most brilliant ideas ever in the history of my ideas at the time. Instead, I trudged home and spent the rest of the afternoon wiggling my be-socked toes together and sniffing my cherry-scented nail polish. There may have been some rocking. And then I ate a lot of potatoes with a chocolate ice cream chaser.

Looking back, I do kind of regret not jumping on my giant yellow sun bandwagon of one, but my discovery of this new reflex to defend my joy has stuck with me. This being present in my own life thing is powerful stuff.

Sober me apparently believes in my right to happiness, and

sober me has the chutzpah to be my own little army of one against the fearsome depression, and

sober me is a bit of a freak with a brain that refers to US and WE when it's running its little internal monologues, but WE LIKE IT THAT WAY.

----------------------------

PS.  Check out my daily Phoneography pic. It's the thing I do daily.