It’s been a bit nuts lately. Busy. Not necessarily in a bad way, but busy nonetheless. And tomorrow is Thanksgiving, so I took the day off today to start on my preparations.

Thanksgiving is “my” holiday in that I do the menu planning and implementation. Because I’m good at it. If I get any help from the rest of my family, that’s delightful - but I don’t count on it because it leads to disappointment.

Anyway - it’s almost 9pm and I’ve been doing nothing for the last hour or two… which is fine. I’m going to go rock-climbing for about an hour and a half (proactive exercise before tomorrow’s gluttony) and perhaps bake a berry crisp/crumble when I get home since those are quick.

Today, however, I made the brine and started brining the turkey, I baked a caramel pecan pie, I prepared beets according to a recipe in the Bon Appetit cookbook, sweet potatoes a la Mark Bittman’s recipes in the NYTimes, and brussels sprouts by marrying a recipe I saw on TV with one I found in another cookbook (involves cream, lemon, pecans and tastiness). Tomorrow will be reserved for stuffing, biscuits, cranberry sauce and other things that are best made right beforehand.

I’m tired. I am. But it’s an OK kind of tired because I can see the fruits of my labor sitting in the fridge, wrapped neatly in tin foil… and tomorrow, I’ll get to enjoy them all.

There were flurries this morning. It was 23 degrees Fahrenheit last night. The high today was in the mid-30’s. Winter is here and I’m not quite ready - but I’ll be readier when my new winter coat arrives on Saturday. I have been checking the FedEx tracking just to be sure. It’s not like the status is going to change before tomorrow night, but I find it reassuring to look and see that, yes, it’s been shipped and, yes, the scheduled delivery is for Saturday morning. That means warmth.

In other news, I had a very successful rock-climbing night last night, and I was pleased. I conquered one climb that had gone unfinished several times last week - and I nailed it cleanly on the first try, and as my second climb after my warm-up. It felt really good and put me in a positive frame of mind for doing some more difficult ones afterward. I was afraid I’d wake up all kinds of sore this morning, but I didn’t. Which is both good, surprising, and bad. Good because I’m not sore. Surprising because I really sort of should be, especially in my shoulders and inner thighs. Bad because it means that I could wake up with The Soreness tomorrow. Oh, well.

The game plan is to go climbing for a few hours after work tomorrow and then head into the Village to see “Let the Right One In” at the Angelika. It’s been a movie-filled time; I saw “W” and “Quantum of Solace” last weekend. Both were OK, but not stellar. Judging by what I’ve read about “Let the Right One In”, it should be pretty good. I’m excited for it; the rest of the vampire-movie-loving people in the world will be heading out to see “Twilight” (what I am going to refer to as the “Chastely Lustful Sparkly Vampire Teens” movie).

Now I must set about important business… selecting some haircut photos from a hairstyles magazine to bring to the salon on Saturday morning. I get antsy about my hair almost every month. Usually, I can stave off the desire to chop or dye it, and I make it a few more months. This time, however, I am using my friend as an excuse. Her belated birthday gift from me is a haircut, so I figured I’d make an appointment around the same time so we can go together and BOTH get haircuts. Besides, the dry winter air wreaks havoc upon hair so trimming off some ends and changing the style is really a… ummm…. health issue. Yeah. That’s it. HEALTH.

This is a grocery store in southern NJ - Bridgeton, NJ, to be exact.

So, I had an appointment with the doctor after work today, and was sitting in the waiting room for a while, reading my book (re-reading Amsterdam by Ian McEwan). The other women sitting there seemed pretty content watching TMZ - one of the many trashy Hollywood gossip shows on TV - so I just tuned out and read my book. The Simpsons came on after the gossip show, and everyone seemed pretty happy watching that, too. Having seen that particular episode umpteen times, I continued to read my book.

Another patient walked into the office and sat down. After 30 seconds of staring at the TV and sighing and huffing and flipping through the pages of People magazine with audible irritation, she stood up and proclaimed, “I can’t watch this. Does anyone mind if I change the channel? I come here to get away from my kids and I don’t want to be watching this cartoon crap.” (Oh, insert thick stereotypical NJ accent).

Everyone else nodded in apathy, and I didn’t care at that point, so I said, “Go ahead.” This was folly, but it wouldn’t have been socially acceptable to say, “NO - I’m really enjoying this while I’m reading my book” or “Well, it depends entirely upon what you’re going to change it to.”

The latter was what I really REALLY should’ve thought about. But I had my book, so whatever.

She got the remote and instantly punched in the numbers of her desired channel (premeditated -I should’ve known). She popped right over to The Insider, yet another Hollywood gossip show. This show started off with random crap about Jennifer Aniston appearing on Oprah and saying she’s proud of Brad Pitt and feels good about turning 40. OK, fine. Innocuous. Then it turns to the American Idol “shocker.” That shocker is the suicide of an obsessed Paula Abdul fan (also named Paula). The family members spoke out about this young woman’s death, and I’m sure they had meaningful things to say in remembrance of their loved one, but this was chunked down and boiled down to sounding something like this:

Paula’s mother: “She was my daughter and she was not that kind of person.”
Paula’s cousin: “She was my cousin and I loved her. She was Paula, you know?”

That commanded about 5 seconds of airtime - the “correspondant” then cut to footage of various American Idol personalities looking somber (whether it was in relation to this woman’s death was not apparent, but I’m guessing it was just footage of them not caring about anything in particular) and commented, “It’s not apparent how this will affect the judges on Idol, but we’ll find out when the new season premieres on January 13th.”

I was more than a bit disgusted.

After the commercial break, they dove into the exciting story of a Houston housewife who has already had 10 breast augmentations bringing her most recently from a 38FFF bra size to a 38KKK. She had to go to Brazil to get that done since they wouldn’t perform the surgery here in the good old US of A. Now, a plastic surgeon with a reality show of his own (at least, I think he’s one of the doctors featured on Dr. 90210) has made it his personal mission to dissuade her from leaving the country to get yet ANOTHER augmentation mere months after this most recent one. She really wants to get up to a 38MMM. He told her that her breast tissue is too thin to support larger implants and that they will tear through her flesh and drop to the floor. He showed her video of her last augmentation surgery. After groaning over the grossness, she decided that she still wants the surgery because she wants to have the largest breasts in the world.

The woman in the waiting room at the doctor’s office - the one who didn’t want to watch The Simpsons because it’s apparently nothing but a dumb cartoon for kids - commented about the Houston housewife, in complete sincerity - “Poor thing!”

Commercial break. The Insider returns with a “shocking revelation” in “the case” of the Houston housewife and her enormous breasts. She’s pregnant.

This is why I really don’t watch TV anymore. When I do, though, I’m more than happy to catch an episode of The Simpsons or Family Guy. Why? Well, for one, they’re chock-full of cultural references and pretty brilliant social commentary and parody if you actually watch and pay attention. Tonight’s experience, however, reminded me that some people don’t want to watch TV so that they might occasionally think or laugh at our culture or, ultimately, themselves. They like to watch to pull themselves away from all thought and to be manipulated, for someone to put on a show for them and give them something very simple to respond to. No complexity, thanks. Good / bad, happy / sad, normal / freak.

It reminds me of the future of TV in the movie version of Fahrenheit 451 where Montag’s wife is tranquilized by her pills and the soothing voices of her “friends” on TV. Though that was more of a statement on how TV destroyed the desire for intellectual pursuits (namely, reading) by  providing a substitute for both intellectual exercise and social interaction by tricking people into believing that they had an active role in what happened on the screen - the TV characters spoonfeeding them questions to which the answers were fairly obvious or completely inconsequential (”where would you seat so-and-so at dinner” or something like that, if I recall correctly).

Ugh. Then I went and talked to the doctor, got my concerns and crap out on the table, managed not to cry the whole time, and left feeling just a little bit better yet than I have these last few nights.

The end.

I don’t think I’m ready for winter yet. Part of it is that I need a WINTER coat - not the wool and angora blend fall coat that I currently have. But a new winter coat represents yet another expense that I can’t think about right now.

New tires will be needed before the snows come (since they might this winter) and that’s a nice chunk of change since I traded up for the 16″ tires/wheels (on the touring edition of my car) instead of the standard (read: cheaper) 15″.

Also, I shouldn’t need to layer on three blankets to feel warm enough — with the heat on. I think that’s my own problem. Temperatures that feel warm to normal people still feel quite chilly to me. I used to think it was because my circulation was poor because I didn’t get enough exercise; that excuse, however, is no longer valid. I’m getting a solid amount of exercise, so why am I still cold all the time? My friend suggested (all too kindly) that it might be the decrease in body fat; seriously, that’s nice for him to suggest, but couldn’t be further from the truth.

Anyway, tonight I am cold and tired and trying very much to keep my game face on for yet another day. Having distractions these last two nights (that distraction being climbing in both cases) is the only thing that’s kept me from spending the evenings sitting around crying and feeling like a sorry-ass-piece-of-shit. Instead, I have exciting new bits of torn skin, bruises and soreness in my arms.

The pain reminds us we’re alive, yes?

While there’s no such thing as too much Radiohead, it’s possibly a bad choice to listen to nothing but Radiohead when entering a depressive episode.

The awesomely beautiful and depressing power of ‘Videotape’, ‘Exit Music (for a Film)’, ‘How to Disappear Completely’, ‘There There’ (”we are accidents waiting / waiting to happen“) and ‘I Will’… though it somehow didn’t make my mood worse. It made me feel a bit less isolated. I suppose that’s part of the point.

I’ve been feeling crappy for several days (mentally now, not physically, though the one does have power over the other if you recall yesterday’s post) so I’m trying one technique which is to do things “outside” (put on a happy face, as the song says) that might then bleed inside and improve my mood. I’ll let you know how that goes. For now, it’s a very fleeting respite from the crap-storm in my head.

One goal was to get some exercise tonight (because we know that exercise and a routine are as good as, if not sometimes better than, anti-depressant medication), so when my friend from the rock gym said he’d be there and willing to belay for me, that cemented my evening plans. Even if it was only an hour of climbing, it was a solid hour, I did some good climbing, and broke a crazy sweat (and now I am cold and need to shower). Having that sense of accomplishment helped improve my mood a little.

Before I left, I changed my Facebook status from something a little sad to the following:

I was referring to the fact that the last two times I climbed, I tore holes in the palms of my hands. The original time was painful enough, but tearing the partially healed “flappers” was even worse. That time (last Monday) when I went to rinse the ick off my hands in the bathroom at the gym, I actually cried because the water hitting my hands stung so badly. I normally have a very high tolerance for pain - but that was just too much. My hands aren’t as tough as those of my climbing friends; they’ve been at it for years and have rough hides, like so many forest creatures (or hippopotami.) So that experience for them is a distant, faded memory… as some woman say childbirth becomes.

Either way, thinking about my bloody palms called to mind the stigmata and -boom- I’m moderately irreverent. I’m hoping most people just find it confusing, that those who should get it do, and that I don’t horribly offend anyone. Considering that the only comment on that status so far is, “Um, what?”, I’m not sure which I’ve done. Hopefully #1.

So, other things I’m going to try to do include climbing again tomorrow since I have a visit with the doctor on Thursday night. I’ll bring my camera to work to take some photos since I’ve noticed that the view outside of the office looking out over the Hudson River and the NYC skyline is quite lovely in the twilight hours (since 5pm is quite dark these days) and I should capture that now. I’m going to count down the days until this weekend when I’ll get to see friends. That should carry me through.

And tomorrow is Wednesday already, after all. I hate to be “working for the weekend” because it’s such a ridiculous cliche, but there’s a reason it’s cliche. That said, it’s still a shitty realization.

Now, warm shower before my muscles start hurting.

Stress and depression make me sicker than any actual viruses or bacteria ever do (and I double-checked the plural of virus before I typed that. Trust me.)

The last couple of days, I’ve been stressing over random big things in my life that I can’t currently change. Because they’re big and beyond my grasp, I of course worry about them far more than I should and let them dictate sweeping stupid thoughts and statements about me (e.g. “I am wasting my life” and “I am inconsequential to everything and everyone”). That’s not entirely normal.

I’ve spent the last two hours or so since I got home crying in the most undignified, horrible, weepy female fashion - not pretty crying, no, but the kind that leaves me incapable of breathing until I blow my nose and then horrifies me with the prodigious volume of stuff in my head. And I’m not talking about Trivial Pursuit answers.

Thankfully, friends were available in this time of need and talked me down. The cloud is still there, but it’s not raining at the moment, which is good because my head hurts from it all.

I don’t care to explore this further because I will start crying again. And I don’t need to do that to myself.

Halloween: Went into NYC - without a costume - and experienced the fun surreality that is Manhattan on Halloween. I’ve done the parade thing before, but since my friend and I were still pretty tired from moving stuff and no one else coming along seemed to feel it was necessary to Halloween-it-up, we just saw Synecdoche. Depressing, but wonderful.

Halloween weekend: Spent time with friend, went running, went climbing, played Trivial Pursuit Book Lover’s Edition; discovered that there’s a huge hole in my reading history that consists of beach reads and other pap. Oh, well. I think I’ll live. Started getting sniffly and sick from allergies.

Tuesday: took the day off for Election Day, had breakfast at a diner filled with little old ladies, many of whom were wearing blue Obama caps, voted, and watched the election results play out with friend, friend of friend and some of my siblings. Was officially “sick”, though not contagious. Stupid allergies. Either way, happiness happened, the world changed a little and the sense of possibility buzzing in the air was quite palpable and electric, even into the next morning when I got to work.

The rest of the week was a blur of work, lack of sleep from waking up multiple times in the night coughing, more work and some grumpiness due to being sick and tired — and the emotional withdrawal that happens when you get all comfortable spending extended periods of fun and happy time with a friend and then stop.

This weekend - I haven’t done much. At all. I’ve been coughing and congested and sounding frog-like, but I went running a couple of times on the treadmill. Had some Chinese food. Did some laundry. Got caught up on “The Office” and “Family Guy” and “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” and “Heroes” on the internets. So the treadmill was necessary since I was pretty sedentary otherwise.

And now, because I’m tired and feeling a bit sickly as yet and have that withdrawal thing going on, I am dreading waking up tomorrow and going to work and getting through another week. The good part, I suppose, is that after this week, I have another weekend and I will see at least one of my friends. Perhaps I’ll be able to get some rock-climbing in during the week.

There’s a world of stuff going on in my head right now, but nothing definitive enough to put into words. Though I will most definitely be trying to get some creative writing done in the near future. It might mean there’s less here, but these things happen.

Resources are finite, as is free time.