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So Christmas came again. The run-up was the usual mix of meditation and insanity, and the holiday went faster than I would have liked. I worked through Thursday evening, celebrated my sister’s birthday on Friday, then stayed at home with my family (and B!) until Monday afternoon. It was awesome.

But being at home? It gives you all these feelings. Mostly good feelings, of course, but also feelings about how life used to be, and how that informs your life as it is now. And also feelings about where you are now, and how what you came from makes you feel about where you are now versus where you thought you might be or, in some ways, where you ought to be. Get it?

No? 

Me neither. But I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. It’s kind of like mental Twister.

I always kind of hated that game.

Hey, I won something! I mean, really, it’s nothing – literally. It’s not a thing. But anyway, winning is cool. Especially if, like me, you are BI-winning. This weekend I ALSO won a pair of free tickets at the Coolidge by telling my tale of Etsy revenge to a theater of enthusiastic hipsters. Where’s the revenge, you ask? Let’s just put it this way: his store is no longer open for business. Whether that is due to his own (questionable) choices or my grassroots campaign to get him kicked off the site, well, who’s to know?

Anyway, this storytelling and winning things and this post on DefineFunctioning all kind of merged in my brain suddenly, and I realized that I felt a lot weirder telling my Etsy story to strangers than I would have telling the story of my breakdown. It’s Mental Health Awareness Month, which I put right up there with pre-sliced apples on the Scale of Ridiculous Man-Made Concepts. Like, I feel that we’re all pretty AWARE of mental health. Nobody really needs a reminder. Antidepressant ads are everywhere, having a therapist is the functional equivalent of having a toaster, and, aside from primary care, there’s nowhere harder to get an appointment than a good mental health clinic. They’re all full.

And yet.

And yet I know so many people who are struggling with their OWN mental health awareness, but don’t feel comfortable getting help. People from all types of situations with all types of personalities dealing with all types of issues, but always the same refrain: “I just wouldn’t want anyone I worked with to find out”. I mean, I’m not just talking about like, one person, here, I’m talking about more people than I have fingers and toes.

So, per the requirements of the award, here are seven random things about me:

1) My story about Etsy revenge last night was way too long

2) Because I tend to talk a lot when I’m nervous

3) Probably too much about myself

4) But I think I’m good at listening, too

5) At least, I can be.

6) I wish my doctor would weigh me backwards, so I don’t have to watch her fix the numbers.

7) But I’m too weirded out to ask.

I preach and I preach, but, in my own life, I’m sometimes too embarrassed to be frank about what goes on inside. So, I think that in honor of May 2011, Mental Health Awareness Month, everybody who is on the fence about being frank should just give it a shot once or twice. Check out therapists online, call your insurance company and ask about benefits, reach out to a friend for help.

Or, you know, you could also take out your aggression with a secret war against a total stranger on the internet, and then admit it to a totally different bunch of strangers in the hope of winning a free DVD of this Korean film. That’s worked for me as well.

(The movie passes are better. I know.)

So you might notice I put up a little Paypal link over there, amusingly titled “pay for your meds”. It is, in fact, an account that goes directly to me and may or may not actually be used to fund anything useful. I’m not saying you have to donate or whatever or ANYTHING, but I thought, hey, I did sell anecdotes for a dollar at that festival that time, so it’s not really that much of a stretch.

I have this list of meaningless things I hate to do. It’s not a real list, it’s just in my head, but it’s definitely there. And lately, it’s been compounding.

I’ve always kind of hated filling ice cube trays, an effort which usually ends with me having to mop the floor, which I only mildly hate to do. And you always seem to have to fill the ice trays just when you’re in the mood for a cocktail, thus delaying your liquid pleasure and making your life harder. I hate it when things make my life harder.

And pumping gas. I hate that. Like, you’re going places, you’re doing things, and then, oop! Gas light’s on! Gotta stop! And it’s always raining or cold or snowing while I’m standing at the pump. Always.

I’m not big into showering, mostly because I hate getting out and being all wet, but also because I hate shaving my legs. Washing my hair’s recently gone on the list as well, as has brushing my teeth at night. Unrelated to the shower but in the realm of the bathroom, so it bears mentioning.

What’s been troubling me recently, though, is that I hate standing up once I’ve sat down. Like, this is a primary function of life, right, standing up, but I sit down and I get so damn comfortable, and I hate being uncomfortable, so I hate getting up. I’ve taken to having B! fetch me items like a glass of wine from the kitchen, a box of tissues from the bathroom, or that thing over there by the DVDs. It’s bad, people.

Pretty soon, just breathing is going to start bugging me. And then where will we be? Where, indeed?

I have such a story, and it’s so unbelievably awesome (in the sense that it’s so unbelievably bad), but I don’t want to put it on the blog. At least not yet. If you’re interested in a sneak preview, leave a comment with your email and I’ll send one along.

I’m waiting in line at Target, online return with packaging in hand. It’s not a day that’s as bad as yesterday, but it’s also not a day that’s terribly GOOD. I’ve just come from Home Depot, which probably my #1 place to wish I could just curl up and die. Except maybe the East Boston Neighborhood Health Center. But that’s another story.

There’s two, maybe three people in front of me. It’s hard to tell, because one of them is the size of a spaceship and the other keeps wandering around, pushing his TV-in-a-cart to and fro and to again. The girl on register moves like she’s underwater. No urgency there. No sir.

I’m checking my email. I’m reading signage. I’m getting annoyed by all their ads encouraging me to “Shop Jolly”. I’ll shop jolly when I’m damn good and ready, Target, and I don’t need YOU pushing me around. I’m playing a losing game of Scrabble on my iPhone, thinking back to all those NPR pieces about how playing games on your iPhone all the time is bad for your brain. The computer gets a Bingo. The line inches forward.

Now the girl can’t figure out how to return the TV. He must’ve bought it on some crazy Black Friday sale, he looks the type. The girl is kind of running her fingers absently over the computer screen, I want to scream. Finally, after a complicated shuffling of flat-screen boxes, it’s my turn. I take my items out of the packaging and use my “let’s be friends” voice to explain that I’d bought them online and here’s the receipt. I’m looking forward to getting my refund and getting the hell out of there.

“Oooh, you can’t return this with this,” the girl tells me.

What. After all that waiting? Seriously.

“Yeah, seriously. Says so right here.” She points, and, sure enough, the packing slip can’t be used as a return receipt. Whatthefuck. “I think you can use those computers back there to print one, I don’t really know how, but…”

Would you bet that the computers were all broken? Would you bet that I left the store with my unwanted merchandise still in hand? Would you believe that I may never shop Target online again, if this is the kind of thing I’ll be having to deal with?

Oh yes, my friends. Yes, yes.

This was a steal, even by Craigslist standards. $25 for a futon frame? Super sold. So B! and I hopped in the Yaris, buzzed across town, and knocked on the door of one of the nicest beachfront condos I’ve ever seen. Its owner, an early 20-something dudebro, gestured behind him at the pile of metal and wood that was the disassembled futon frame.

Hm, I thought, those arms look awful high.

“Those are some high arms,” I said.

“Yeah,” replied dudebro, “it just didn’t work in my place.”

But shit, for twenty five dollars, I’ll buy just about anything. So we put it in the car, we cart it back to Revere, haul the thing upstairs, and put it together.

Ladies and gentlemen, This thing is not a futon. It’s a bed. Or a restraining crib for cantankerous adults. You choose.

I’ve been super busy lately, between the job I’m keeping and the job I’m leaving and the weddings and the client work and the apartment and the move and whatnot, but I like to think I’ve been keeping a handle on myself. I keep moving, I make lists, I don’t think too hard, and it happens. It’s like magic, it’s like waitressing – that part of waitressing that’s just instinct and flow, total mastery of your task and environment. That part of waitressing that happens just before you hit the weeds.

“The Weeds”, in restaurant terms, means you’re overloaded. You’re beyond. You’re too swamped to even tell people how to help you, but you’re also too swamped to do anything for yourself. All you can think of is everything you need – the drinks, the desserts, the dinners, and the checks for tables 4 and 6 – and how impossible it will be to get all of it done before something explodes. The weeds is the worst place to be, it’s the opposite of productive. It’s digging your own grave and pissing in it.

This morning I got a call from my mom that her mom (my grandma) is not doing well. Morphine drip level not well. And before I can even deal with the potentially imminent passing of my last surviving grandparent, I’m thinking about all the different ways this will blast out the intricate house of cards upon which B!’s move here has been built, and if I don’t go out there and rent the car how will he get out here, right, because he doesn’t have a credit card and they NEED a credit card, and I can’t take any more time off work and I can’t afford another flight and I’m late for my meeting and I think my old boss thinks that I suck and really, don’t I? Because all this shit is going on, and it’s all important, but the most important thing should be family but that’s not what I’m thinking about because it’s all really LOGISTICS, and my LOGISTICS are FUCKED.

All of a sudden, just like that, I’m totally weeded.

After my hectic week of yore, I was kind of glad that the only thing on my agenda was a Keynote tutorial at the Apple store. (And an oil change. And a realtor meeting. And a ton of editing, researching, and emailing. Calls to Canon tech support, calls to accountants, calls to agencies, whatever, but it was the Keynote tutorial that really had me stressed.) I thought it would be something really high-level, and, having never used the program before, I was a little concerned. Visions of a dozen Mac freaks looking down their black-rimmed glasses at me, as I held up the session with my stupid questions about Inspector. I also thought I was going to be late, and am presently paying .20 a minute to blog from Legal Seafoods while my car is parked in the Prudential Garage. The garage is a total ripoff, but I couldn’t bear to tell my new boss I missed the Apple tutorial because I was too cheap to pay for parking.

So I get in there, all frizzy-haired and sweaty, toting my unsheathed mac in one hand and my iPhone in the other, and there’s only one other woman there for the class. And she’s, like, never used a mac before. All of a sudden, I’m feeling high and mighty. We went slowly through the basics of slideshow creation, I learned how to do cheese wipes and motion effects, and then I got bored and then it was over. I’m not saying Apple ran a bad tutorial, but it gets back to my initial point about Keynote and Power Point and all this shit.

What’s the fucking mystery?

Like, people put Power Point on their resume as though they created their own new operating system, and every time I go to use it it’s just so insanely dumb I can’t believe it’s even real. Like, using Power Point is about as difficult as washing your face, or drinking a glass of water. Keynote’s no different. I can’t believe they even offer a TUTORIAL on it, like any moron with two thumbs couldn’t go in and click and drag their way into something that looks remotely professional. Unless I’m missing something, slideshow presentation software could be the biggest hoax pulled on American society since the red scare.

Power Point users! Keynote gurus! I beseech you: tell me your secrets. Show me how I’m oversimplifying the issue. Make me feel as small as a grain of sand. Tell me.