Month: October 2013

I realized this week that I should have upped my meds a long time ago. No regrets and all, but I wasn’t functioning properly and I couldn’t even see it. This week I cooked dinner every night — shocking that that is shocking, huh? After we got home from America, I didn’t cook for a month. Then in September I threw something in the crock pot a few nights a week if I could be bothered to get up and get something out of the freezer and turn on the crockpot.

This past week I made lasagna with grilled eggplant noodles, meatloaf with quinoa and vegetables, cream of spinach soup, Moroccan spiced eggplant, tabouleh (lebanese salad with mint and parsley), and chicken poached in white wine. Each of these recipes I either invented with what I had on hand, or I found several recipes that looked good and blended the bits I liked from each of them. That is normal me.

Looking back, I can’t remember what we did for dinner for the past 2 months. I know Josh would come home from work and cook some nights — other nights we’d go out or order in. I wasn’t ever really hungry, so I didn’t feel like cooking. Or grocery shopping. And we were both so tired that neither of us saw the huge red flags and realized that something wasn’t right.

I’m sure we could go back even further and improve my performance in life over the past year by increasing my medication as soon as I got to Bahrain, but sometimes it’s hard to tell what is “normal” depression caused by moving, stress, and fatigue and when it crosses into “abnormal” territory. I know plenty of people who wouldn’t consider what I was feeling as worthy of medicating, but I don’t want to be “good enough” or “OK,” I want to be myself. And myself likes cooking. Welcome back.

Caleb has been playing water polo for the past 5 weeks (the older two wanted to play as well, but it meets at the same time as the base youth group . . . priorities). It’s been fun for him to have something to do that he gets to excel at all by himself.

Everyone is getting political, but don’t worry, I’m not that deep. It is irritating that the government keeps threatening to not pay us, even though Josh is required by law to report to work whether he gets paid or not, but I think they changed that over the weekend. I vaguely remember reading something about someone passing a law keeping our pay from being used as a pawn in between articles about the identical triplet girls born in the UK and news of a Mylie Cyrus documentary. We also have a Dave Ramsey emergency fund, so there are no worries about having enough money in the bank to cover food and bills — at least for the next 3 to 6 months.  

I think the only answer to all of this is “None of the Above” (shoutout to a classic, Brewster’s Millions, for that piece of wisdom). One of the best things about living overseas is that we are insulated from all the back and forth politics. It’s actually tempting to do another overseas tour because it means we’d miss another presidential election season. That rates right up there with household help and inexpensive pedicures! 

Being overseas also makes me appreciate the rights and freedoms that I have as an American, but sometimes it’s easiest to love your family from afar, know what I mean? (Not MY family of course — just speaking generally). 

Meanwhile, back on the island, the kids are doing OK in school — none of them are scholarly geniuses, but they all make up for it on the basketball court which is more important anyway, right? Only 4 more games and fall basketball season is over (sniff, sniff), but next up is dodgeball so I’ll still have an activity to cheer for. 

The kitten has seriously cut into my knitting time because he springs and attacks my yarn anytime I have it out. He and the dog are getting along great and they occupy each other which means they are both less needy of me. The dog even tolerates Zeki attacking and “killing” his front paws or leaping onto his back from the bed or couch. He’s very longsuffering.

Meanwhile the cat is getting similar treatment from Camille. We found her the other day, cat in arms, spinning and singing to “Fireworks.” It was hilarious and horrifying at the same time.