My daughter’s been learning the facts of life at school lately. Naturally, she’s had lots of questions, most of them about the workings of male-female relationships.
“Mom,” she asked me. “What happens when a man and a woman get married?”
Before I could answer, my son jumped in.
“When a man and a woman love each other very much,” he said, “they get married and then the man can’t have beer with his friends anymore.”
I often feel people who know me don’t really understand what it’s like to have bipolar disorder. Sometimes I don’t even understand, but I’m starting to work that out.
Here is a post from another blogger with bipolar disorder that very accurately describes one aspect of living with bipolar disorder. I hope you’ll read it, especially if you are close to me or are close to someone who is bipolar.
http://manicmuses.wordpress.com/2013/03/13/the-energy-post/
I’m paying more attention to my son, for a number of reasons, but one big one is to find humor nuggets from him that aren’t completely obscene. Here’s one:
My daughter loves to play board games. My husband loves to sit alone in front of his computer and play hearts. My son loves to play video games. I like board games in principal, but they bring out a competitive spirit in me that makes Lance Armstrong look like a pansy. I don’t like to sulk for three days after losing Monopoly, so I avoid board games.
One day, my daughter was looking for a board game partner. She asked me but I graciously declined. She asked her brother, who ungraciously declined. Indignant, she huffed, “Then, I’ll ask Daddy.” My son responded, “He’s playing with himself.”
My gift to you this IWD are the following tweets, in the order they appeared in my feed. This is by way of amusing you (I hope), demonstrating my lack of dinosaurosity (I may be old, but I know a hashtag when I see one), and putting together a really quick post so I can go back to recovering from the chaos that is home improvement and writing about my miserable childhood (to be published some day, perhaps soon).
@craigkielburger:
Around the world, women spend 200 hours a day cumulatively collecting water. #internationalwomensday
@JimmyChooLtd:
Wishing all women around the globe a happy #internationalwomensday.
I’ll leave you with the happy image of women, water jugs on their heads, tottering through the third world in their Jimmy Choos.
This morning, at 5:30, I was woken by the call I most dread, the one from my school district with the joyous news that my children will be home with me . . .all day . . .bored . . .and whining.
My daughter bounded up from the breakfast table, into her snow pants and out the door to make snowmen. Yes, they are still called snowmen; snow people just sounds so wrong.
We live one suburban back yard away from a huge barren depression in the landscape retention field where the neighborhood children sled. My daughter started her part of the snowman in our back yard; her friend started the other part in her backyard. The intent was to meet in the field for assembly.
“How’s your snow man?” I asked my daughter on her return.
“Oh, by the time I got to the field, my part was so heavy we couldn’t lift it, so we just left the parts next to each other and made snow boobs.”
My poor husband. He is frequently the butt of family jokes, particularly from my son and I. I’d like to say he’s laughing with us, but really, he’s not. Generally, he’s a pretty good sport. Every now and then, though, he’ll let us know he’s had enough. So, we’ve been trying to be more careful of his feelings, but still . . .
On a recent car trip, my daughter and I were tweaking Dad. He was being very patient, but I could tell we were getting under his skin.
“Aw, honey,” I said, intending to tell him we wouldn’t tease him if we didn’t love him, “We only tease you . . .”
“Because it’s fun!” said my daughter from the back seat.
I’ve said numerous times that my son’s sense of humor is so obscene that I can’t write most of what he says. I attempt to keep my blog relatively family friendly and he tends to use far too many F-words for print. A while ago, though, he uttered the following gem.
My daughter and her friend were in the back seat, singing along to a favorite song. It was something kind of Selena Gomez-ish or maybe it was Call Me Maybe. Regardless, they were young girls and sang in those screechingly high, thin voices that make even in-tune singing painful to hear. The girls were not singing in tune. It wasn’t bothering me as I will accept just about any sound that isn’t whining. My son, however, is a musician.
“My god, Mom,” he said, “It sounds like somebody’s grabbed a camel by the testicles!”
So often, Americans compare our healthcare system with the Canadian and, somehow, find the Canadian comes up short. Franky, many Americans find any healthcare system other than ours lacking in something yet we continue to rail about high costs, insurance premiums, HMOs, etc., etc., etc. And we justify our system by retailing random tales of dissatisfied citizens from other countries.
Here is a tale from a satisfied citizen of another country: Australia. Here in the States, we don’t often hear about Australian health care. I somehow believe that Americans might listen to an Australian, given our similar histories.
Daily Prompt: Right to Health … Wow what a question for an Australian.
Seems like lately, we’ve been going through a not-so-funny period at what is usually The Fun House. Between arguing about whether driving is a right or a privilege with our son and arguing about how much duct tape is too much with our daughter, I’d say things are decidedly downbeat. Today, I find myself trying to find the humor in a hole the size of a ten-year-old’s heel in the staircase wall. It’s not coming. Note to new parents, you think you will escape the horrors of preteen and teen parenting. I laugh at you. All I can say is have plenty of wine on hand, and a tub of spackle.
How’s your day going?
I want my mania back.
Now, if you’re normal, you probably can’t understand why someone with Bipolar Disorder would even contemplate wanting a ride to the top of the roller coaster, particularly when what’s waiting on the other side of the climb is a drop into depression.
Even if you’re Bipolar, you might not understand remembering mania wistfully. Getting deeply in debt, driving drunk or high, having sex with strangers…why would anyone want to live that way? Certainly, I’m in no hurry to return to my wicked, pre-medicated ways, but the life of lethargy I’ve been living lately has seriously outworn its welcome.
A little mania and my house wouldn’t look like, well, like someone was too depressed to straighten. The cleaning ladies are scheduled to come tomorrow, but even that isn’t uplifting. Without straightening, it won’t even look like they came except for the telltale trails of a vacuum cleaner. Add in the fact that we can’t afford the mostly ineffectual crew but don’t have the heart to fire the now 70-year old woman who has been cleaning our home since my son was two and who just lost her retirement savings in a series of ill-advised real estate transactions, and my morose mood is more understandable.
A little mania and I wouldn’t be feeling like a parental failure because my son—who carries my genetic code—barely scraped together the four Cs and an A on his recent report card while my daughter—adopted from China—came home with all As . . .ok, one B+. Sure, my son also had an A in PE, but PE doesn’t count. I know, I know . . .a class focused on activity suits his ADHD brain, PE is an important class in a society full of couch potatoes , an A is an A. Yada, yada, yada. And I know that lots of kids get Cs, even lots of kids we know and lots of kids we know who got into colleges they wanted to go to. Cs aren’t Fs, but that’s the problem. To me, Cs are just Fs with a silent F. Unkind and unfair, I know, and further evidence that I richly deserve the depression I’m in.
A little mania and my creative well wouldn’t have run dry. I’d have posted witty commentary on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, how I came to love the running skirt, watching my husband writhe in pain. Well, maybe that last one wouldn’t have been witty. I might even have finally figured out how to get my son’s obscene sense of humor featured in a blog with a PG13 rating.
Just a little mania, that’s all I’m looking for here. Of course, there’s no such thing as a little mania. Oh, at first I think there could be, that I can keep the momentum from building out of control. But it always escalates so that what started as a trot through the park turns into a wild gallop and a crashing fall.
So, I took my meds. I let the house be cluttered beyond recognition. I sat my ass down at the computer and I wrote, even though writing was the last thing I thought I could do, and pulled these 600 plus words out of some secret place even I didn’t know existed. Pretty soon, I’ll put on my running gear—it might even be warm enough for a skirt today—then get my ass off the chair and onto the trail. I’ll ignore that the unseasonably warm weather is most likely caused by global climate change which will lead to the early demise of our planet. At least, I’ll try.
I’m sure all of that will help. But I’ll still miss my mania.
Snide Reply 