you drive me crazy.

it's been a bit since my last blog. let me fill you in and invite you to my self pity party.

i went crazy. yes, seriously. i had a bit of a nervy b (nervous breakdown to many of you) and lost my rag last thursday. today is the first day i've done anything on the computer aside from rock some new found glory on itunes or fuck around with my farmville. damn it.

i've spent quite a bit of time in bed, cooking, and sewing. as such, i have quite a few new bags and cases to post on my site. what's my site, you ask? http://rule42custom.com. go there and buy things, since that may well be my only form of income starting soon.

i can't imagine my job driving me nuttier than i already was. i work at home, in my home office, with my cats and my itunes library and my diet coke and my own bathroom (which is nice). i type - basically, just like i'm typing now. i am subcontracted to a large consumer electronics company and i chat live with their customers. so it's mostly a sales position, with some service thrown in for good measure. basically, what i've been doing most of my teen and adult life. i am all about customer service.

and i'm good at what i do. i routinely am one of the top performing agents. but the last couple of months, i've been feeling a bit less enamoured with the job. they keep telling us we're not doing good enough, but not giving us the tools to help. not even just 'not giving us the tools' but actually TAKING AWAY tools that we have had for some time. and it's a lot of catering to the lowest common denominator - which i am not - and i really don't appreciate being spoken to or treated like a fucking idiot or a kindergartner.

on top of that, i have been out of therapy and off medication for over four years, and i think that may be long enough. it's been becoming harder and harder to cope and function on a daily basis, and my job is the first thing to suffer. i won't go into details, but it's not pretty.

so what you have, in essence, is me sitting at my desk, 'working', talking to people about consumer electronics, and crying while i type. all. the. time. like every day. i made it 19 minutes into my last shift. so then i start having panic attacks and shit like that. and then i start dwelling on why i can't be a 'normal' adult, how i'm 30 years old and i cannot hold a job, why i can't work and take care of my family and be an active participant in my life.

i believe it's called a 'downward spiral'. it's definitely downward. the end result is me lying in bed with my cats crying for almost four hours until awesome husband comes home and forces me to take a shower. then i need days to recuperate - it is so emotionally draining that it becomes physically draining. so it turns into a pressing medical issue, or time off work.

i was starting to feel a bit better on saturday, but took this week to try to find a doctor and get some meds moving and shit like that. of course, that would be easier if any doctors would call me back. i spent friday morning calling my insurance company and 4 different mental health professionals. and left four messages. and didn't hear back from one, even up to today.

my rational, grown up mind knows that doctors are busy/assholes/on vacation, etc. my batshit crazy mind tells me that even the fucking doctors are rejecting me and don't think i deserve to get help. that has in the past turned into another two days in bed, but i have my family and my cats to take care of, so i girded my loins and called a therapeutic center that has therapists, psychiatrists, group therapy, everything under one roof. they said they'd call me back within three hours to do an intake assessment over the phone. 'super', i think to myself, 'i'll have meds within a couple of days'.

they called me back, did the 'assessment' (name, ss#, address, are you planning on hurting yourself or someone else, what is your current issue - that's ALL they asked) and told me that they'd have someone call me back WITHIN A WEEK to tell me WHEN they could see me.

at this point, my batshit crazy mind is actually contemplating suicide. i'm thinking of changing my answer to question #4. my rational, grown up mind knows that means a trip to the fun hospital and decides to continue with the loin girding and go cuddle a cat.

finally, doctor 7 called me back last night and scheduled an appointment for today. it's a therapist - not a psychiatrist - so no meds for me, but they referred me to a psych that can prescribe meds (oh, joy unbounded - another round of waiting for callbacks). i could break my therapist in two, and she says 'mhmm' a bit much for my liking, but i think we may be able to work with this. i call the psych, re-gird my loins, and hope to be on medication within a few days.

then i realize that my copay is $50. i have to go once a week. if i don't work the job i can no longer emotionally stand, then i won't have money to go to the doctors and get help.

luckily, i was not alone when i came to this realization - awesome husband was with me - otherwise i may have started foaming at the mouth and blathering a bit. i believe this is what we call a 'conundrum'. i also find it 'ironic' that we pay over $100 a week for insurance that covers about 30% of my office visits. so it would be 'cheaper' for me to pay cash out of pocket than to pay for insurance.

oh, hello again downward spiral.

at least i still have my sense of humor.

and on the seventh day, i sewed again

so it seems my new thing is taking wednesdays off from 'normal work' and doing 'fun work' all day, like sewing. since i'd like sewing and selling the things i sew to be my 'real' job at some point in time, it makes sense to devote some time every week to designing and creating new stuff.

of course, that means i now have a bunch of completed bags sitting in plastic, waiting for someone to buy them. and a fuckload of material that i can't WAIT to make into things. and i will. soon. i hope.

anyway, i slept late today and decided to make a cheesy delicious omelet when i finally did drag my ass out of bed. and then i got down to sewing. that went on for a couple of hours, while i listened to all my new found glory albums and drank a liter of diet crack... ergh, coke. then i was off to the farmer's market at cagan crossings, the apartment complex i used to live at.

well. 'farmer's market' is a very, very generous term. there were maybe six stalls set up, and only two of them were selling any fruits or veg. there was a soy candle booth (good idea, setting up your candle booth OUTSIDE in FLORIDA in JULY), a shave ice booth (which means all i could think about for hours was the sealab 2021 episode where marcos comes back and tells his story about selling shave ice), something about jams and preserves, someone who made something that had to do with shells? and i think that was it. i don't remember if there was another stall. oh, wait. glass things. like glass tiles and bead things and whatnot. ah hah.

and there weren't even any red peppers to be had. damn it.

but i did get four HUGE tomatoes, two green peppers, and a beautiful eggplant for $5. i really wanted red peppers since we're all so into roasted red peppers recently, but i'll live. so i decided with my new found veg that i should make a new recipe tonight. i went to allrecipes.com, which is my go-to recipe site, and entered 'chicken', 'tomatoes', and 'green bell peppers' into their ingredient search.

and a bunch of fucking ridiculousness came up. stuffed peppers. arroz con pollo. mexican rice.. really? chili soup (wtf?). and finally, chicken cacciatore. which i've never made, but had everything on hand to complete for dinner. and ended up rocking. i changed the recipe, mais ouis, because that is how i roll. it is. seriously, that is just how i roll.

everyone was pleased. i have now added it to my rotation of delicious food i can make and make well, that i will serve regularly.

or, as regularly as the ingredients go on sale. i do not appreciate paying $5 a pound for fucking chicken breasts.

and then, we were going to put the veg in the car, when we noticed the recently opened jewish deli. like kosher. glatt kosher. so we decided to stop in.

i don't appreciate paying $18 a pound for pastrami, but we did pick up some very delicious black and white cookies, and a potato knish that i really can't wait to eat. they had some beautiful meat in there, make matzo ball soup daily, and apparently supply kosher meals to one of our local dinner show, arabian nights. which seems to be like medieval times, but with... arabian times? there's a pirate one too.

you have no idea what it's like where we live.

the moral of this blog? someone tell me when red peppers are in season.