Relief.

You have to laugh sometimes at the dumb things you do..."you" meaning "me". I am now down to 10 mgs Valium from 20mgs and tonight I'm going to 5mgs. I've also lowered my Tegretol from 1000mgs to 800mgs. So how's it going?

Last night I went to bed thinking there is no way in hell I'm going to be able to sleep, but if it hadn't been for my puppy wanting under the covers, because it is so damn cold, and then out of the covers because he was suffocating, I would have slept like a baby. I was having tons of dreams. I miss those too. These are welcome back.

As for the laughing at myself, I am a bit "spacey", and not altogether "there". I have been having some of these difficulties over the past few weeks, but today they went from stupid to bizarre stupid.

This morning I poured my coffee, opened the fridge, grabbed the vodka and was about to pour it into my coffee. Something seemed amiss about the situation though and before I poured I realized it was milk I wanted. I can't imagine what my brain would have thought had I poured the vodka in and my coffee didn't become creamy coloured.

Then (after drinking the coffee, which theoretically should have woken me up) I went to have a shower, a long, hot shower because it is so cold some of our pipes froze today and I could not get me or the house warm. So I started the shower and began to slowly undress ...then I jumped into the shower with my slippers on;>{probably not the horribly sexy outcome you were hoping for in the story). How is it possible to do that? After 43 years of showers or baths I forget the slippers?

Today though, despite wet slippers and a potentially "unsobering" morning I had a pretty good day. Not one of the great days I have had in the past, but I was "on". I felt like doing things and on a whim drove to Granville Island Market, which is usually insanely busy on weekdays, let alone Saturday afternoon.

It is an amazing public, indoor and outdoor market in Vancouver full of vegetables and specialty meat stores, all kinds of food stores (pasta shops, fish shops, butchers, bulk food store, wine shop bakeries, tons of fresh fruit and vegetable stalls, a unique food fair...the list goes on and on), fine art shops, art studios and a fine arts supply store, and the renowned Emily Carr Art University. It is a really, really great place to go, except you can NEVER find parking and it is usually so packed I feel super anxious when I go there.

Today that changed. There was hardly anyone there (weird given that it is the last Saturday before X-mas and it is supposed to snow tonight)...maybe 1/2 of a normal weekday crowd. Parking was easy to find. The best thing about the experience was that people were drawn to me the whole time I was there. I felt charasmatic.

The lady at the bakery chatted me up and even gave me a free cinnamon bun (the best on the planet!!). Then at the specialty meat shop the man serving me (he was HOT) kept coming onto me in a very obvious manner..which almost made me blush...well it did make me blush:>)...which only made him more persistently charming, causing me to blush even more at my own attraction to him...yikes.

Then I walked down to the art supply store and a charming young man, who I always see there said hello and asked me how was as I walked in the door...he's so cute, usually I avoid eye contact...today I felt as charming as him. I came home and had a nap, falling quickly into a deep, deep sleep.

Good energy has been pouring out of me most of the day and a c'est la vie feeling (or is that a dazed feeling) is encompassing me. This awakening relief from depression is particularily surprising today, given our water pipes froze last night, and it took forever to get them fixed and the house warm. On top of that, right before I went to bed last night, my dog chewed and completely mangled and destroyed my favourite pair of glasses. Glasses which I had, just the day before, paid 180.00 plus tax to get new lenses in...What could I do?

I never saw the dog eat the glasses; only found the remains crumpled and spread about on the floor afterwards. I walked over to him, knelt down, took his beautiful face in my hands and gently and lovingly whispered in his ear:

"My cute, sweet, adorable little puppy. Look what you did to my FAVOURITE (although emphasized, this word to was whispered softly and lovingly in his soft white floppy ear) glasses. This is not good. You won't do this again, right?"

To which he responded by angelically looking towards me, looking into my eyes with his big, brown, doe eyed stare. He then wagged his tail madly and licked my nose" Which can of course mean only one thing..."I love you, won't happen again." Ha! In my dreams.