News with Richard Bleil
So far, the winter has been wildly mild. I should mention, though, that I wrote this about a week ago if it posts according to schedule. Oddly enough, right now, winter is acting like, well, winter. It’s been snowy and temperatures below freezing, although not tremendously cold. Honestly, when I say I’m “digging out”, it’s really not in the manner in which I should be. I purchased a snow thrower a couple of years ago, and I should have been using it, but I’d rather wait to see the thaw take care of it.
This was a bad decision. Right now, the ice is relatively thick on my driveway and walkway. I’m not sure that the snow thrower would take care of it. I might need to use salt instead. But before this bout of cold weather, I’ve been fighting one of the deepest and longest lasting depression I can recall. It started before the holiday season began, and my house usually reflects my mental state of mind. My floor has been littered with boxes from frivolous online purchases, and relatively clean garbage since trash that decomposes or will start to smell I’ve been getting rid of. At least I have that going for me.
Depression is a funny thing. The depression that started mildly and built to having narrow walking paths through mounds of garbage has apparently subsided to the point where for the past two days, I’ve been digging out of this mess that I’ve created for myself. The first day, I cleared off my dining room table as well as the other horizontal surfaces in my main living area. Today, I’ve been working through the garbage on my floor. I’ve been picking up wrappers, plastic shipping materials, and segregating the boxes for recycling. Although I’ve been hitting it hard for the past two days, I started a couple of weeks ago and already filled two trash bins for pickup. I’ll have filled bins for two more weeks now.
Most of the work is done, but it’s not over just yet. I still have two more small piles to go. Well, small compared with what I’ve done so far. One is underneath that same kitchen table, and the other is in the kitchen, but I should be able to finish those both tomorrow. That won’t be the end of it, though. The floor is so dirty that I’m starting to slip (one of the reasons I fell on Christmas), but a good sweeping with my overpriced professional vacuum cleaner that I’ve not used enough yet should take care of that. There are some battery chargers I want to move, and once I do that, I might even be able to use my robotic vacuum once again. Wouldn’t that be novel? And, of course, I need to clean the bathrooms.
All in all, I’m happy with what I’ve done, and I want to reward myself. I don’t know if you can count this as a reward because I actually ordered it two weeks ago before my current efforts began, but tomorrow I’ll be picking up a blueberry pie. This is a local vendor, and I’ve already purchased (and fully consumed) a cherry pie from her in the past. Curiously enough, I wanted a blueberry pie then, but for some reason the request that came out of my fingers was for a cherry pie. And I do love cherry pies, so I’m not disappointed, but I still didn’t get my blueberry. And she’s incredible.
It’s been so long since I’ve had actual homemade pies that I actually forgot what they are like. I’ve gotten used to the flat barely flavorful pies that you get in the freezer section or in restaurants with the dull and uninteresting crusts that I started thinking that those are what pies are. Her pies have very dense but flaky crusts with just the perfect amount of sweet with delicious heavy filling that puts the other pies to shame. I always overtip her for them, but that pie will be my meals for the next three days. It’s a fitting reward for the efforts that I’ve been making, and if I stop writing these posts it’s because I’m in a diabetic coma.
Depression is a difficult thing. I can remain functional throughout my episodes to be a productive member of society when I have a job (although at the moment I don’t), but watching the chaos build in my house is the biggest warning that something is wrong. The chaos builds slowly enough that it’s easy to think, “oh, I’ll pick it up tomorrow”. Eventually you hit an inflection point where it goes from that to, “ugh, this’ll take hours”. And it did. Days in fact. But once there’s a crack in the depression veil, it helps to take advantage of it and hit it like a storm. I still have more to do, but I’m feeling better already now that there is at least an end in sight. For those suffering as I do, I wish you the very best. You’re not alone.
Bleil's Banter 