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I spent my third weekend in a row sleeping and being morbidly depressed when not sleeping. I reminded myself that when I get out and garden I usually enjoy myself. I told myself that it was better to do *something* than nothing (actually, I read "Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince", but that isn't quite as much something), but I couldn't make myself budge.

I was invited to a bbq on Saturday and thought I'd make myself go but I examined things and realized I felt almost nothing but dread about it. The friends that are hosting it seem fed up with me and have seemed that way for months (not so much the husband as the wife, though). Then there was the difficulty of going somewhere where it was very likely I'd be the only single person there. Not because I'm on the make and want other singles there for dating possibilities, but because it just reminds me of how alone I am. It makes me feel unloveable. I had thought about going to practice. I had thought about getting my drink on before going simply because that's the easiest way for me to banish my pessimism and self-consciousness. When I realized I didn't have many positive expectations for this bbq, and I was having trouble getting my ass out of bed anyway, I decided not to go.

This morning I had a much easier time. I had to go to work today. And it made me realize that if I can't get my internal locus-of-control to be more powerful, perhaps I ought to beg someone to help me or pay someone to check in with me on weekends. I had expected my friend P to come over on Sunday but she didn't. And I didn't call to chase her down. I'll have to figure out some way to inject enough structure into my free time to make me move, but not so much that I feel like it's drudgery.

My dad is in Eugene helping my uncle recover from a triple bypass surgery. That seems to have gone well. My uncle is out walking a bit. And has many friends up there, which is great.

Tonight I go to Final Cut Pro class. Luckily I managed to dig into the clutter at my house and find the VHS to which I had numerous Super-8 home movies transferred. So I'll go to Berkeley Community Media earlier today and try to get all that footage digitized. I know my family would be happy about it if they had easier access to it (which was what putting it on VHS was supposed to do but media formats march on...)

I see my GP today and that's happy-making. She's really cool. I hope to god that wherever I end up next that I'm able to keep her as my GP.

I got a couple notes from folks from DWS and that was happy-making, too.

I watered a bit of the front garden before work this morning and I'm proud of the job I did planting things. Right now there are several stands of cornflowers (which the wind threatens to blow over), some lavender larkspurs, love-in-a-mist, cosmos, alyssum and cerinthe. I'm especially glad about the cerinthe because although it is trendy as hell in Berkeley, I've wanted one ever since I first saw one. The colors go perfectly with the house. All the aforementioned flowers were grown from seed so it's especially magical (and cheap!).

The Weird Shit Just Keeps On Coming

I just got an Evite, with no prelude, from someone who unceremoniously cut me out of her life more than 10 years ago. WTF?

Appt. with the GP was good but the office didn't write down that it was supposed to include pap, etc. so I'm going in again in a couple weeks. I'm going to be trying Cymbalta for a while and see if that makes any difference. I'm kinda hoping it doesn't because it's not yet available in generic and it's not on my insurance's formulary... But now's the time to try it, while I'm still nominally employed.

Having some good email exchanges with my dad, so that's good.

Sometimes it's NOT you!

I've been trying to learn XHTML and CSS (my HTML skills are ca. 1996) and I've been busting my ass over this particular bit of code in Stylin' with CSS. It's the code for the horizontal menu. No matter what I tried in the way of tweaking, the Dreamweaver MX 2004 had the menu wrapping. It also had the menu div encroaching on the div below it. I tweaked, I copied, I pasted, I watched more CSS tutorials. Nothing was helping. I parsed it bit by bit and couldn't figure it out. Finally, having heard in a sitepoint.com tutorial that the design view in Dreamweaver is capable of bugs, I decided to preview in the browser and see if it was screwing up there as well. It wasn't! Oh man, if only I'd previwed earlier...

Home Movies

Remember them? My parents had a Super-8 camera and a couple times a year we'd get the projector out and watch them. With popcorn. Well, about a decade ago I had my mom send me up a box and I had them transferred to VHS. And, in the never-ending shell game that is trying to keep things archival, I'm now starting to digitize them. I signed up for a video editing class at Berkeley Community Media and they have the equipment that will allow me to do digital capture from VHS. So I snuck in as much as I could before class, during the break and during "free time" in the last 10 min. I'm sure there are still hours to go.

The oldest clips on there are black and white and look to have been taken by my grandfather in the '50s. Then it skips to me as an infant and goes on from there 'til the early '70s. As my dad tosses me around, I wonder who that kid is. Honestly, if I didn't know from context that it was me, I'd never have guessed. I looked so different when I was little. It's odd seeing my parents, who looked so old to me then, and knowing they were only a little older than half my age now. My dad's hair was still red. My mom was still active doing things she doesn't do now.

Then there are the interactions with my siblings. My eldest sibling and I have a really hard time getting along and have ever since we hit double digits. It's a long story. Anyway, there's a clip of him pulling me around in a red wagon. The younger brother pulling the older sister. There's another clip where we're all playing the the sprinklers in my grandparents' backyard in San Berdoo and my middle brother, who was maybe 5 or 6, turned around and handed me a towel, unasked. It was sweet.

I see me playing football with the guys. I see me running around in a bathing suit completely unashamed of my body. I had nothing to be ashamed of, but only about 5 years later I would feel enough pressure from my brothers calling me "fatty" (and my mom's own body image issues that she passed on) that I went on my first diet. Again, being perfectly svelte and not needing to drop an ounce. I see my shoulders straight and confident, not rolled and slumped as they are now from years of trying to disappear, of trying to take up as little space as I can...just from feeling terrible about myself.

It's like I'm watching strangers. Who are these people? Who is this innocent kid?