A note for Thalian on why Aki and I can't come to visit him and Rapante:

Okay. Three months ago my life got taken over by a certain exuberant and clumsy squeaky hairball.

This means that I can't travel by train any more. Squeaky Thing is a big, powerful dog, and she's one year old and absolutely full of energy. There's no way she can spend six ( Read more... )

I wake up in the soup. That's the fog of ever-shifting inconsequential thoughts, the inability to focus, the endless distractibility. (Tip: it's fifteen minutes since I started that last sentence ( Read more... )

Written two weeks ago:

Our culture is gradually learning not to stigmatise depression, but to recognise it as an illness which is at least partly treatable. For me, the most fortunate aspect of this (apart from the treatment, bless it) is that I can be open to my colleagues about my condition. I gulp down my citalopram with my morning decaf, and ( Read more... )

Today is March 21st, the vernal equinox, the day when-at least in most years-a small lump of iron-rich rock, slowly rotating in a tilted orbit, briefly presents its equator to its small unregarded yellow sun. Across both its hemispheres, day and night stand in perfect equality, except at its poles where horizontal daylight streams across the ( Read more... )

Dear me, that was an icky couple of weeks. My boss is very understanding of my situation and tries hard to avoid making me work two weekends in a row, but this time it just had to be. I can manage one weekend without getting to see my dog, but now it's nearly three weeks and it's kind of an ache, you know what I mean?

I miss akeela too, but I miss him ( Read more... )

One of the things I really appreciate about German long-distance trains, which make them qualitatively more pleasant to travel in than their English counterparts, is that they have special sealed small-children compartments in each wagon.¹ One of those compartments is earning its keep right now: I can just faintly hear the sounds of irate ( Read more... )

Beautiful weather outside-a cloudy variegated sky, already dimming towards an unseen sunset, the soft wind cooled by a light clean rain. I put on some rice to cook, and some ratatouille to reheat, and went to lean on the balcony and watch the weather ( Read more... )

One of the characteristic features of depression is that you lose control of your paperwork. Emails, letters, bank statements, taxes, appointments, receipts, tasks, address changes... You can't really help it: whenever a piece of paper lands in front of you, you just can't quite face it right now, so you put it aside just for now, but of course ( Read more... )

"It is such a joy," I said expansively to one of my Polish colleagues, "when the pills kick in and I rise up out of a depression." I raised my arms and inhaled with relish. "It's like... it really is like coming back to life, like being me again ( Read more... )

When I was at university, I went for something like a year basically living on brown rice, fish, onions and bananas. That's not to say I didn't eat other stuff too-my diet was balanced and healthy enough, but that was my staple, my regular meal. I was happy with it. Each day I'd cook up a big pot of rice, sauté some onions and cook them into a ( Read more... )