Strongly Worded

Mental Health Day

I’m taking a Spanish class to revive my pathetic language skills. (I used to be completely fluent in Spanish and now I bumble along and butcher the grammar. I am addressing this problem at the local adult education center.) The instructor (who is quite hard core) makes us write in-class essays. The most recent topic was “La Salud Mental Y La Alegria” : mental health and happiness. I wrote a mistake-ridden piece about the prevalence of mental-health related topics in the media, and about how pharmaceutical companies put out the message that we can achieve happiness through medication. I wondered whether anxiety and depression are more common today than they were a generation ago, or whether we’ve simply become more aware of their impact and more skillful at treating them.

I believe that, in my own life, I’ve learned to distinguish between unhappiness (general discontent/disappointment about life conditions) and depression (inability to see past the disgruntlement/disappointment; disbelief that said life conditions will ever change; persistent despairing and self-hating feelings; dwelling in a dark, dark place I call the Vortex of Gloom). The former condition is not really medication-able; the latter is. I cannot take anti-depressant medications because they lower seizure threshold. So when the Vortex pulls at my chemical/emotional balance, I worry, because there’s not a lot I can do about it.

I’ve felt a lot of low-grade unhappiness lately, mainly because I don’t have a boyfriend and things at work are un-fabulous. These are two major problems I have been working diligently to solve. I am tired of talking/writing/thinking about them, and I worry that by doing so, I am maxing out the patience and goodness of my readers, friends, and family members. I am ready for something wonderful to happen to me. I’d even settle for something really good. Or hell, good. I’ll take just plain good.

Anyway. I wasn’t thinking I was anywhere near the Vortex until a family friend showed up for a weekend visit. She’s a therapist and she noted within the first hour of our visit: “You seem depressed.” I attributed this to my nasty cold and my nasty week. (Last week was wretched for a host of reasons. Perhaps because Mercury was in retrograde.) Then I stopped to think.

My close friend A. noted that I didn’t seem like myself on Wednesday night, when I showed up for our monthly dinner gathering. Again, I attributed this to my bad cold and my bad week. But then I remembered that I had to leave last month’s dinner gathering because I had a hideous headache. On both occasions I found myself driving to the dinner, running late, feeling frantic and stressed. At work lately, I have been procrastinating in a major, unacceptable way. I find it incredibly difficult to get out of bed in the morning and get to work on time. I have constant headaches, pain in my wrist, stiffness in my neck. This is unlike me. I’m usually very punctual, organized, and productive, and I usually suck up my physical pain. And my feelings about dating Mr. Computer Code? Totally meh. Despite his multiple sweet and chatty emails, and his programming ability, I’m totally unexcited about going out again. The end of daylight savings time really brings me down; this is an annual occurrence.

So: am I depressed? Or just legitimately disgruntled?

Posted by Dori at 11:57 AM 6 comments

UpDate # ... to Many to Count

I went out on a JDate with yet another MIT guy, this one's a computer expert (really nice, although no sparks thus far, even though he's perfectly OK-looking). I mentioned that I had this issue with re-flowing emails when they're pasted into word docs (you know what I mean? The text doesn't go all the way across the page and I've always had to manually delete the line breaks).

A few hours after the date I get a "nice to meet you etc. etc." email with CODE. He wrote me a macro.

Roses? Poetry? Things of the past. These days it's drug company propoganda pens and computer programs. (I'm not knocking this one, though--it was super, super sweet and cute. Also useful.)

Posted by Dori at 11:53 AM 1 comments

Thank you for your patience; sorry for the inconvenience

This week has sucked. And, if you’ve been diligently trying to check my blog and been faced with the domain host’s enragingly perky advertising site, then you know why. Thanks for your concern, and thanks to all of you who actually know me and have my email address and have checked in.

Basically, my domain was set to expire in 60 days, and being the plan-ahead-responsible chick that I am, I went ahead and renewed it, and there was some glitch because my beloved friend R. set up the site in the first place, and the transfer was supposed to take 24-48 hours to “take”, at which point the tech support people assured us that everything would be fine. I waited 48 hours and nothing was fine. R. and I collectively called tech support about 18 billion times, and emailed each other about 9 billion times, and even spoke on the phone while both simultaneously logging into the site and trying to get it back up. R. is a computer genius, so the fact that this took almost a week and so much struggle is a testament to the incompetence of the domain people and also the nasty streak of technological bad luck that I’ve experienced this week.

It started on Monday, when I was dealing with billing stuff at work. We installed a 3rd phone line over the summer, and the first bill arrived and seemed insanely high. I debated whether to call Verizon or not--I've had really annoying experiences with them, and always debate whether my hourly rate and opportunity cost outweighs the amount of overbilling. But I felt the weight of my responsibilities, and all the fiscal oversight involved in my oh-so-important job, and so on. It was decent amount of money. I called. I heard "hold music". At first they said nothing was wrong. Then they looked into it. Turns out our new third line phone number was "recycled" from someone who had DIED. And this guy had DSL. And they never removed DSL from the line. So we got billed for our normal DSL and the DSL OF A DEAD MAN. After laughing at the absurdity of the situation, and also with frustration and rage, I spoke with five different "customer service specialists", and all of them were very "sorry for the inconvenience" and thanked me for my patience but confessed it will take 30-90 days to straighten out the problem.

So I pass those words on to you. Thanks for hanging in.

Posted by Dori at 11:47 AM 5 comments

Party Like You're No Longer 29

Last night I co-hosted a party for E., who just turned 30. Thus, I had the supreme pleasure of cooking all kinds of yummies; arranging a cheese flight; creating a centerpiece of flowers, mini pumpkins, and votive candles; and welcoming close to 40 people into my colossal apartment (which is SO nice, after living for so many years in small, un-party-friendly spaces).

Co-hosting exempted me from three terrifying aspects of party-throwing:

1) Choosing/playing music (I am very insecure about my musical tastes, plus I have no equipment: just a speaker-less laptop, a 1980s boom box with inconsistent volume controls, and a clock radio).

2) Dealing with alcohol. I can't tell a "char" from a "cab"; mixed drinks puzzle me. Plus, I'm hopeless with a corkscrew.

3) The scariest of all: creating the guest list. Remember the movie Stella? The one where Bette Middler plays a tacky "wrong-side-of-the-tracks" mom, and she plans a birthday party for her daughter and her prep-school friends? And none of the rich kids show up? And there's this wrenching mother-daughter scene in which the two of them eat birthday cake, all alone in their festively-decorated living room? That is my one of worst nightmares. I know that I'd still have fun if I solo-hosted a party and the turn-out was low. Still, I shudder at the thought of standing around with a disappointingly small crowd, confronting an over-optimistic array of food that screams:"This party is lame; clearly this chick has no friends."

I had none of these fears with this soiree. E.'s brother hooked up the tunes. Her friend Ellie dealt with the liquor. And the ultra-popular E. handled the guest list (sans evil evite, I must add). It was especially lovely because we have a bunch of friends in common. In fact, a number of my dearest friends (who E. knows through me) attended as well.

It was a great party. People loved almost all the food (not so much the beet dip, however), and I got high praise for a butternut squash, rosemary, and caramelized onion pizza (adapted from this recipe--I omitted the bacon and added caramelized onions to the pureed squash, topping it with mozzarella). Guests mingled. Some even danced. I felt a little overwhelmed by the number of people I wanted to hang out with, and I obsessed a little about the plastic forks that wound up in the artichoke dip (I forgot to put out serving utensils, which led to a somewhat ghetto effect).

But overall it was fun. I felt successful. Everyone was super, super nice, and I hope to have many of E.'s friends over in smaller numbers so we can really talk. At the end of the night a bunch of us chilled on the couch and debriefed, and this maybe was the best part. We talked about the girl with the adorable dress who successfully executed the short-skirt/knee high boots combination. We discussed the ambiguous sexuality of another guest. We praised the seamless flow of conversation and our own good taste in friends.

I felt very flat this morning, now that it's all over. But the balloons are still hanging around the doorways (and one has rolled next to my bed). There's still plenty of smoked gouda in the fridge. I have polished off the spinach-in-a-bread-bowl, but there are beets to be had, so I'm thinking the after-party will rage for a few more days, at least.

Posted by Dori at 8:02 PM 4 comments

Playing the Rape Card

So. We here in Massachusetts are drawing to the end of our governor’s race. It’s a groundbreaking election in that the candidates are an African-American man (Democrat Deval Patrick) and a woman (Republican Kerry Healey). Even though I acknowledge that political activism is an important way to further my progressive agenda (and not at all incidentally, meet smart and liberal men), I have not participated much in this campaign.

I am a shamefully out-of-touch person and I don’t read newspapers and rarely listen to the news. Not because I’m above mainstream media, but because I’m busy and my attention span can only encompass so much (namely: Project Runway, Netflix, you know how it is …)

However, my alarm clock/radio is set to NPR. And today, while resisting getting up, I listened to a story on Healey’s (the female Republican) latest smear campaign. Her ad (which you can check out here: click on the dark greenish picture in the middle), shows a woman walking in a darkened garage. The voiceover is an out-of-context clip from Deval Patrick’s comment about a convicted rapist (a guy named LaGuer, who was prosecuted ages ago): "He is eloquent, and he is thoughtful; there's no doubt about that."

The (female) ad narrator then asks "Have you ever heard a woman compliment a rapist?” She concludes: "Deval Patrick should be ashamed, not governor.”

This enrages me greatly. Healey is behind in the polls, and clearly this ad targets the middle-of-the-road women who might support her just because she lacks a Y chromosome. Healey’s pollsters obviously assume that these same middle-of-the-road women are so dumb that they don’t know a manipulative fear tactic when they see one, and that they are too busy with their barefoot pregnant cooking to recognize that it was Healey’s very own Republican administration that slashed funding for statewide Rape Crisis clinics last year.

All I can say is: grrr.

Posted by Dori at 5:11 PM 2 comments

Rise and Shine

I find it deeply depressing that it’s Monday again. Didn’t we just have Monday?

This weekend rather rocked. I attended the local library book sale/fundraiser and bought ten books for $12. Then I went home and read two of them. Seriously. I read for ten hours straight. When I was done, I thought to myself: if I’d been on a plane, I’d be in Morocco or something. I read An Empty Lap (a memoir about adoption) and Anna Quindlen’s pretty decent new novel Rise and Shine. Both books were authored by journalists, and they incorporated many GRE words. At some point I knew the definitions of truculent*, mellifluous**, and obstreperous*** and unctuous****. No longer. I looked them up this morning while delaying the inevitable return to work.

What else? K. and her boyfriend and I ate spectacular sandwiches at the Sherman Café, an uber hip neighborhood spot. We observed that we were the only socializing customers. Everyone else was studying/reading/writing alone. I can’t decide if it’s a sad state of affairs that cafes are full of inwardly-focused customers, or whether it’s nice that inwardly-focused people are hitting the streets in such great numbers.

On Sunday, S. and I saw the Last Kiss, which I just loved. Also I went on a historic walking tour of my neighborhood and learned that a single slate shingle costs $150. This explains why so few people are restoring slate roofs these days.

Also I roasted two batches of vegetables.

* Noisily and stubbornly defiant
** Melodious
*** Disposed to fight; pugnacious
**** Overly ingratiating

Posted by Dori at 11:37 AM 2 comments

Breath: In 8 Second Intervals

So the next chapter in the saga of my neurological situation began today. After pretty much flunking out of acupuncture (even the lovely, lovely acupuncturist acknowledged I had "mixed" results), I decided to take on biofeedback.

Biofeedback, for the uninitiated, is "A form of treatment for headache that uses electronic feedback of hand temperature and/or muscle tension to rapidly teach patients how to deeply relax ... [it] has been shown to often reduce the frequency and severity of both migraine and tension-type headaches."

I generally dislike (and am bad at) relaxation exercises, but I am desperate. So I made a series of appointments with Cathy, who is a social worker and biofeedback specialist at my women's headache clinic.

Today was my intake. A textbook Social Work 101 intake. Cathy asked: "how would you describe your mood? Do you ever feel like suicide or homocide? Do you have a substance abuse problem?"

When I said no, she giggled and told me, "not one single person has ever admitted to having a substance abuse problem when I asked that question".

She asked about my headaches, and I described their frequency (3-4 headaches a week, often, and lately, several of the really wretched lying-on-the-counch-crying kind). She smiled broadly and said, "I'm not sure if this is a helpful thing to say to you, but I see women in here all the time and they have daily headaches--many of them for years. Sometimes it helps to have some perspective."

And I was all: fuck you. That is not only not in the least bit helpful, but it is also mean.

She asked about general life issues. No suicidal/homocidal feelings? Good. Is anything else bothering you? Something that might be causing stress?

I told her that I'm extremely stressed by my crazy job. And that I'm looking to fall in love, and I'm 29, and all my friends are married, so yeah, I'm stressed about that too.

Her face lit up with excitement. "Are you Jewish?"

And when I nodded she squealed: "Have you ever heard of JDate?" And I nodded and told her the story of the guy I went out with last week, the one who quoted 1980s fantasy flicks and gave me pens advertising migraine medication. "But you should read about all the success stories on the site! You should have some faith."

I told her I had no shortage of faith, and that I know at least three ultra-committed couples who are JDate alums. (She was surprised by this.) My disenchantment is personal. Much like the headaches, I don't so much care what experience others are having. I care about my experience,which currently sucks.

So she jumps in, all perky-MSW-problem-solver: "Are you happy with your photo on JDate? That makes a huge difference, you know. "

I insisted that my photo was fine. She switched tacks. "What about those shabbat services for singles? Have you gone to those?"

I became pissed. I talk about my love life (or lack thereof) all the fucking time. I wanted to talk about my headaches. Actually, I didn't want to talk about my headaches. I want to do something about my headaches. I want my headaches to be GONE. I want to learn to RELAX. Are you getting this? Are you LISTENING?

Eventually Cathy got the message and she hooked me up to the computer and I practiced breathing in 8 second intervals. The gizmo is amazing. You put on a belt and tape a little sensor on your finger, and the computer monitor displays a temperature reading and also a graphic depiction of your air flow. The goal is for the breathing to make smooth, gently rolling lines across the screen. I did it pretty well and raised my temperature several degrees, which is good.

The creepy thing is that Cathy knew when my mind "was straying from the breath". Something about the way lines on the screen get all jagged. So I'd start thinking about work/breakfast/electricians at my house, and she'd intone in her Biofeedback Specialist Voice: "now gently bring your attention back to your breath".

It freaked me out. As I was leaving, she smiled broadly and said, all super happy, "I'm so glad you're here. I find that patients who have exhausted all their other options are the most motivated, and tend to do really, really well with these techniques."

Translation: she gets off on the desperate, seemingly lost causes.

I'm sighing, I'm resigned. If it will help, I'll breathe this way or that way or any way she wants. I'll let her read my mind. I'll listen to her Jdate advice. Whatever it takes.

Posted by Dori at 1:04 PM 3 comments

A Random Assortment of Things I Currently Like and Dislike

I am liking:

• Mini binder clips (the really little ¾” ones). So adorable and so useful. They bring me joy.
• Hearing a song I love on the radio as opposed to on a CD/iTunes. Especially Vienna Teng's "Whatever You Want", which is on approximately every five minutes on 92.9 WBOS radio station. There’s something about that surprise that is just so lovely.
• Typed file folder labels. I take a lot of satisfaction printing out labels and making my files look sharp and ultra-organized. Although doing this also fills me with shame because it such a colossal waste of time.
• My two super-soft Gap long-sleeved T-shirts.
• This new bra I just got. I have not yet concluded whether it actually fits, but it came with a printed tag featuring a continuum—and I am serious—of “sexy”. The bra is white opaque lace and rated 6 on a scale of 1-10. I giggle every time I look at it.
• The heat in my apartment, which comes on strong and fast, and over which I have complete control. 71 degrees, baby. Love, love, love it.
  

Some things I don’t like:

• Because of my inexplicable reluctance to erase voicemail, I have nine saved messages on my home answering machine. This is not a good state of affairs.
• Plastic bags. I hate how they breed, and I hate how they spring out of whatever receptacle they’re in, requiring constant smooshing down. I hate how they take a million years to decompose in landfills, and I hate that I am not so good at remembering to bring my canvas shopping tote bag on shopping trips, and that I am not so good at remembering to bring the plastic bags to the recycling section of the supermarket.
• Paying bills. As an uber-organized person, and someone who teaches classes on financial management, I should be better at this. But I hate, hate, hate dealing with bills.
• Certain fonts, including Comic Sans MS.

Some things about which I am on the fence:

• The fact that my new staff member has been taking out my recycling bin. This is very kind. It is also annoying because it takes him days and days to return it, and therefore I end up with festering piles of papers under my desk.
• Our new office phone system, which has many lovely features, including the ability to ring only at the desk of the person with whom the caller wants to speak. However, said phone system is way too complicated, and we haven’t yet figured out key functions, like emptying the general voicemail box (which flashed for over a week before I called tech support begging them to make it stop), or changing the outgoing message. And yes, I read the manual.
  
• Kozy Shack rice pudding. So many bloggers are constantly professing their love for it. I tried it last week for the first time. And this stuff is delicious. 5 grams of fat per serving delicious. And such, a blessing and a curse.
• My blossoming relationship with my old boyfriend. We've been emailing and talking on the phone and it is so, so fun. However, we have also entered dangerous territory because we're both single and frustrated with dating. We are so not getting back together. Really.
  

Posted by Dori at 11:27 AM 3 comments

upDATE #2.7 Billion

So I went out with Mr. Not So Hot (NSH). Besides the (not) hot factor, I had some pre-date concerns. Namely: his (work!) email signature includes his name, contact info, and a quote from Lord of the Rings. Also: he mentioned at least twice before we even met that his favorite movie is a sappy 1980s fantasy flick that I won't name for fear of providing too many identifying details. Also: his responses to my short-but-informative JDate missives were very, very long.

I was not psyched about meeting up, but I proposed it for two reasons.

1) I thought I might be undergoing some kind of cosmic test. Maybe: if I demonstrate my utter lack of superficiality, the cosmos would reward me? And I'd meet someone so uber handsome that he didn't want to post a real photo for fear of being inundated by propositions?

2) My new dating philosophy. Basically: if I stay in on a weeknight and watch Sex and the City in syndication, I have zero chance of furthering my romantic goals. However, if I go out on a weeknight (not a weekend--weekends are reserved for people/activities I actually like) with someone who is male and Jewish, I have an infinitesimal chance of meeting the love of my life, meeting someone who could someday introduce me to the love of my life, or meeting someone from whom I will learn or discuss something new.

So. I stood outside the cafe waiting for Mr. NSH. There were at least four cute guys who fit his general description who were meeting other women inside. I had some flashes of hope, and then Mr. NSH showed up, looking exactly like his picture. He brought me a bouquet of carnations spiked with pens from pharmaceutical companies. This was supremely sweet and also weird. During the course of our conversation, he mentioned the 1980s fantasy flick again.

I cannot complain about him not asking questions. He asked me many questions, including:

When was your last serious relationship? [Way too long ago.]

Why didn't it work out? [Many reasons, none of which are appropriate to discuss now.]

Why JDate? [Um ... because I work in a tiny office with little-to-no social interaction? Because I rarely meet people outside my immediate circle of female/coupled friends? Because I'm shackled by my heritage and am trying to hold out just a little longer for a member of my tribe? Because online dating has been extraordinarily successful for at least three couples I know? Because I refuse to whine about my single status without proactively addressing it?]

Do you date a lot? [Yes, quite a lot, unfortunately.]

Do you like dating? [No. Nobody likes dating. Notice how much this is experience is sucking?]

The thing is, this guy is super nice. Super awkward, and a self-professed MIT geek, but clearly one with a good heart. I feel mean writing this.

Regardless, it's back to the drawing board, my friends.

Posted by Dori at 10:06 PM 8 comments

What the Fluff?

This is bringing me too much joy not to share. Last Saturday was the first ever (marshmallow) Fluff festival. It may have been catalyzed by a state senator's recent proposal to ban fluffernutters (peanut-butter-and-fluff-sandwiches) from school lunch menus. This effort to curb childhood obesity resulted in a major public outcry and went nowhere. In fact, a different legislator responded with a bill that would make the Fluffernutter the official state sandwich. Hilarious headlines punched up many summer issues of the Boston Globe: "Sandwich fight gets sticky"; "All the huff over Fluff"; "Can this spread be stopped?"

Fluff is now made in Lynn (right outside Boston) but it originated in Union Square, quite near where I now live. I missed the festival, but was able to score the delightful poster which I've put on my fridge and would put in my office cubicle if I didn't have reservations about its appropriateness.

Note: I don't actually like Fluff, but I love the concept.

Posted by Dori at 9:30 AM 1 comments

The Great Wall

Today I am back to work after a cool weekend which involved monkfish stew, a work event, a visit with my cousin, a technology fast, and a trip to Harvard Hillel. More on that later.

Right now, my new staff member is shaking things up. He is young, progressive, and cool. Also he is doing an extremely good job. So I am terrified that he'll decide that I and/or my organization don't meet/exceed his standards, and that he will quit.

New Guy (NG) has made several heartwarming comments about his job. On at least two occasions, he even said that he loves it. But, having worked in this tiny office for two years now, and having experienced real yearning and longing when I hear about friends' gaggles of co-workers, and their work parties, and their chatty lunch hours, I worry that any minute now NG will become similarly wistful, and wish he'd taken a position at a bigger organization.

Thus, I'm convinced that we all need to eat lunch together. At least once in a while. NG and I went out to celebrate his employment. Last spring, we had a office birthday lunch at a restaurant. But otherwise, over the last two years, we've all eaten at our desks, or dashed out for a $1.31 slice of pizza across the street, or skipped lunch altogether.

I've determined that I need to create a warm, welcoming office environment. But how to start without being weird and awkward (and overcoming the warnings of my inner adolescent)? Won't other staff people think this sudden sociability is odd?

Today, I sucked it up and tried to make inroads. I took my cauliflower soup out of my cubicle and sat at the conference table. I invited another staff member to join me--he was sitting at his desk reading a magazine and eating a wrap. I felt like an idiot saying, "come eat lunch with me!", since we've never done that before. The staff member looked puzzled, returned to his wrap, and the moment passed. I experienced a deep sense of shame. I think he just didn't hear my lame, half-assed request to be social. So I proposed that we all coordinate lunch tomorrow, and eat at the same time. NG was on board. We'll see what happens.

Though lunch is just the tip of the iceberg. NG's presence has changed other dynamics as well. We rearranged the office itself to make room for him, so now I have a rather official-looking cubicle with high walls that do nothing to create privacy but do in fact create physical barriers between me and my staff. NG is constantly talking to me over the 5 ft. high partition between us. I'm short, he's tall-ish, so during these interactions, I can see the top 25% of his face. We volley comments over the "wall"; sometimes we email information back and forth; maybe once a day one of us will get off our asses and walk the ten paces between our work stations.

Before NG started, I had a smaller, narrower partition. One of my other staff members (the one who spurned me today) used to routinely come over in the mornings and lean on the top of it. I'd drink my coffee, and he'd sway against the divider, and we'd chat. He hasn't done too much of that since NG started and the walls went up. I can no longer see him from my desk. We have to stand up and cross the mini hallway in order to communicate.

Which raises all kinds of questions. If NG and I are yelling over the cubicle wall, does that invite general conversation? After all, others can hear us, but they'd have to walk over to join in. Is something more important or more private if we get up and walk over to one of our spaces? Will we all have lunch together from now on? Am I headed towards the wonderful world of potlucks and "cooking clubs" that my friends enjoy at their workplaces? Or have I signed on for daily awkwardness and culinary censorship (since NG eats socially-conscious and vegetarian food; he might scorn much of what I eat)?

Posted by Dori at 8:17 AM 5 comments