Arte y Pico Award

Terra Incognita has given me the Arte y Pico Award...which I feel really guilty about accepting considering what a lousy posting job I've done over the past week or so...but that's just my insecurities babbling inanely, so pay no attention...and thank you, Terra!

“This award is given based on creativity, design, interesting material, and overall contribution to the blogging community.

"Here are the rules:

1) Choose 5 blogs that you consider deserving of this award based on creativity, design, interesting material, and overall contribution to the blogger community, regardless of the language.

2) Post the name of the author and a link to his or her blog so everyone can view it.

3) Each award-winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her or him the award.

4) The award-winner and the presenter should post the link of the Arte y Pico blog, so everyone will know the origin of this award.

5) Please post these rules."

The five blogs I would like to present this award to are:

Create and Live Happy: Hanna blogs about all of her creative endeavours. She has lots of intriguing pictures on her site, and is always trying something new. I've read about art journaling, glass fusing, quilting, crochet, and making your own fancy papers on her site, along with a lot of other intriguing things. If you're looking for artsy-craftsy inspiration, this is a great blog to visit.

A Therapist With Bipolar: Annie writes beautifully about her connection with nature and how it helps her deal with her illness. For some beautiful and insightful writing, pay her a visit. You'll be glad you did!

Joyously Becoming: Katie is an artist/photographer and her blog has lots of interesting pictures of all of her creations. She writes beautifully about her art and her life.

Beyond Meds: Gianna is truly an artist in the way she is handling and writing about her own recovery from being seriously overmedicated on psych meds. Her journey is fascinating and heartening, and her writing speaks of so much hope for anyone who is finding their own path through the maze of psychiatric recovery.

Superlative in All Things: Superlagirl usually manages to make me laugh...and if she doesn't make me laugh, she makes me think. I really enjoy her blog...her writing is awesome, and she has a truly snarky side that I can really relate to.

A Serious Lack of Inspiration

I haven't been very good about posting, have I? To be perfectly honest, there's just not that much going on right now.

Mother-in-law is back home and doing fine, although I'm not sure if this latest episode was enough to get her on track to becoming more healthy.

The kids are getting along with each other better than ever this summer, so it's been a lot less stressful for me.

I'm off the trazodone, sleeping well, and my moods are as stable as ever, so there's really nothing to report on the so-called bipolar front.

I'm still working on my notes for the journal class, so I don't feel inclined to write more about that here for the moment...feeling a bit saturated, as it were...

I haven't even been writing much in my own journal at the moment, because I just don't feel like I have anything much to say.

Not that this blog is only about bitching and whining...I guess I'm just suffering from a serious lack of inspiration.

I wonder if there's a drug out for that...

Writing Prompt: What do you write about in your journal when you don't feel like there's anything going on in your life worth writing about? How do you handle it when you just don't feel like writing? Do you excuse yourself? Or do you beat yourself up about it for being lazy? (I think I'm bored. I need a new diversion...whaddya think? Any ideas for cheap, interesting hobbies?)

Family Emergencies

My mother-in-law is back home now, crisis averted for the moment, and we all breathe a huge sigh of relief...until the next time. Thank-you, all, for your supportive comments and emails.

Warning: extreme snarkiness ahead....read at your own risk...and if you'd like to preserve your image of me as a sweet, gentle, understanding soul, well, perhaps you'd better not read at all...

Over the last five years or so, we've had quite a few family emergencies involving my mother-in-law and her myriad medical conditions. Family emergencies often bring out the best in people. Unfortunately, the women in my extended family do not exemplify this. Quite the opposite. I've learned a lot about human behavior just by watching them, though...when crisis rears its ugly head--which it does with alarming frequency in this family--one can count on the following:

Sister-in-Law #1: (The Chief's sister) will be furious. This is the last thing she needs, and it's so damn inconvenient on top of everything else. The fact that her constant harping and complaining about how this is all she needs puts Mother under a tremendous amount of stress which probably isn't doing a whole lot to help her recovery will not occur to her. Although she will spend more time at the hospital than most of us (with the possible exception of Sister-in-Law-Wannabe, see below), she will refuse to speak with the doctors or be any sort of advocate for Mother because "I don't understand all that medical crap."

Sister-in-Law #2: (The Chief's brother's wife) will visit once, for the sake of appearance, and when she does, she will be dressed like a runway model, wearing a plethora of expensive jewelry she cannot afford. She will sweep into the room with an air of self-importance, being sure to wave her rings and bangles in everyone's face so they get a good look at what her massive credit card debt has bought her. The fact that she will be required to don gloves, mask, and gown before entering the room will probably cause her to rethink her visit--what's the point in showing up if no one can see how much money she's got?--so if MRSA protocols are being observed, perhaps she won't be showing up at all.

Sister-in-Law-Wannabe: (The Chief's other brother's girlfriend) will spend almost as much time at the hospital as sister-in-law #1, but she will wander vaguely about the room with a shell-shocked look on her face, wringing her hands and making whispered comments about How Awful It All Is. She will let everyone know that she's been so worried that she hasn't eaten or slept in spite of the fact that she has taken large doses of narcotic medication and sleeping pills. She will make sure that she is seen hovering solicitously over Mother in the hopes that we will all forget that she was an instrumental factor in other brother's divorce. If this does not garner her the appropriate amount of attention, she may pass out dramatically across Mother's bed.

Family emergencies often bring families together...but this family is enough to make me want to run for the hills...

/snark

Family Emergency

I may not be around much this weekend...I've just had word that my mother-in-law has been rushed off to the hospital. She has a history of heart problems (quadruple bypass surgery just over a year ago), so I do not know what the weekend will hold.

Social Anxiety? Or Just Me?

I quit my quilters' guild. I was supposed to go on Monday night, and I just couldn't deal with sitting in that room with all those women that I don't feel I have anything in common with...except that we all make quilts. Of course, my quilts don't look anything like theirs...mine aren't these pretty, traditional things in country blues and pinks with perfect points and lovely neat blocks. My quilts are abstract-flowing-full-of-rivers-of-color things that look like someone spilled a paintbox and then threw water all over it...

Okay, well I like them!

So anyway, I'm not sure what it is with me...I have a really hard time belonging to groups. Part of it is never feeling like I have anything in common with the people in the group. Part of it is not wanting to commit to anything too far ahead (this comes from the bipolar thing...not knowing if I would be too depressed to get my butt off the couch when push came to shove). Part of it is me being me, which is to say, shy and introverted and just not needing or wanting to have a whole lot of people around me. Crowds irritate me to the extreme. I can't stand that amount of energy around me.

I'm sure my psychiatrist would be happy to diagnose me with Social Anxiety Disorder and put me on Seroquel for life. But what if I'm quite happy with the way I am? What if I've learned to adjust and accommodate for my needs, and know what I need to do to keep myself happy and functional? Is that still a disorder? Or is it just me?

And why should someone else decide that I'm not the way I should be, that I should be more like everyone else, and that I should therefore be medicated?

Writing Prompt: In what ways are you different from the rest of the world? Do you see these differences as strengths, or do you wish you were like everyone else?

A Product of My Environment

For yesterday's writing prompt, I asked what is one thing you are thankful that you learned, and one of the responses I got was from Susan at Wellness Writer, who said:

"By her example, my mother taught me how to write. She wrote a neighborhood column for a community newspaper for 40 years. And from the time I was child, she wrote poetry to tell us how much she loved us, or to make us laugh! I just assumed that everyone's mom wrote poetry!"

Susan's response made me think about my own experiences growing up. I never had a mentor like that for my writing. My parents both grew up in London during WWII, an experience which molded them into the serious, practical, financial-security-seeking people that they are. When I showed an interest in writing around age 10, I was indulged and told how lovely my poems and stories were, but I was not really taken seriously. The prevailing attitude was that it was fine for a hobby, but really, one had to be practical. How was I to support myself?

And so I grew up with the idea that art was something that other people did for a living. People who had lots of money, or people who didn't mind living in rat-infested garrets. People like me had to be practical, had to support ourselves. A career in the arts wouldn't allow that, and was not even to be considered.

I wish it had been different. I wish I had defied my father and majored in English or art anyway. And I hope that when my own children are ready to make decisions about what they will do with their lives that I will not influence them to abandon their hearts' desires. One of my greatest fears as a parent is that by being a product of my environment, I have influenced them in some way that they will regret, but only realize later on.

Writing Prompt: We are all products of our environments. The things we are told growing up can have a huge influence on us. In what ways has being a product of your environment been an advantage for you? How has it been a disadvantage?

Some Snippets

Two weeks after my last 25 mg of trazodone, and I finally feel like I am sleeping normally again without it. I am falling asleep quickly, and staying asleep, and I feel much more rested and alert. I'm still taking Benadryl...but that's normal for me this time of year. I have allergies, and as August and ragweed season approach, there is no way I can leave off the Benadryl right now. Once we have a killing frost I will stop taking it.

It sounds like the Journal Workshop class will be happening this fall. Now I just have to keep my momentum going until October...I've almost finished my notes for the first of the four sessions. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Gianna at Beyond Meds posted the abstract for a very intriguing looking paper the other day, all about how iatrogenic illnesses may be caused by mitochondrial damage, and how the psych meds many of us take may be the greatest culprits. My initial response to reading it was that I'm not at all surprised, and it would be arrogant in the extreme for medical science to assume it knows everything about the ways in which our bodies function. And if it's true, well, no wonder psych meds have so many horrible side effects and can do so many awful things to people. Case in point right here...

Also of note, Philip Dawdy over at Furious Seasons is celebrating his one-year anniversary off meds. Congratulations, Philip!

Writing Prompt: What is one thing that you are thankful that you learned to do? For me, it would be sewing. My mother taught me how to sew when I was about five. By the time I was twelve, I was making some of my own clothing, and when I moved into my first apartment, I made all the drapes and home dec. stuff for it. Now I work on art quilts, things which have very little in common with the little pin cushions and doll clothes I first learned to sew. But I will never forget that it was my mother who first opened this door for me.