See, I have wicked anxiety. Not the Zoloft variety where I can't function around people (if I'm not functioning around people, it's by choice), but the kind of anxiety that borders on paranoia. No, wait, there's nothing "bordering" about it: At its zenith, it's full-blown, "Wow, you're fucked up and need serious help" paranoia. It's tied to depression, which is rampant on two sides of the family -- the biolgical and my mom's side -- so if you needed proof that depression is both environmental and genetic, here you go. Yes, I take medication for it, and yes, I wholeheartedly support anyone that decides to go on meds to treat their depression, as long as they go through the right channels and use it wisely (meaning, going to their doctor and getting a physical to rule out any medical factors, then going to a therapist to see if the problem can't be remedied non-pharmaceutically. Then after getting the medication if it's needed, taking an active role and paying attention to the meds' effects, not just getting them and then giving up if they don't do what you think they're supposed to do.)

I wasn't always pro-meds. In fact, I remember a time when I was way anti-Prozac since it seemed everyone was going to their doctors and getting on it because they'd broken up with their boyfriend or lost their job or broke a nail or whatever, and that just bugged me. Then my mom had her third nervous breakdown when I was 25, and the psychiatrist who took over her case finally, after many years of having other doctors prescribe her sleeping pill after sleeping pill, understood that she needed to treat the depression first before Mom would be able to sleep. She prescribed Prozac, and it took about a year for my mom to recover -- well, as much as she'll ever recover, anyway, because Mother is Mother, and nothing is ever good.

Nevertheless, it was still one of the hardest things I've ever done, asking my doctor for help, because I'm a Region Broad, and I'm supposed to be able to handle shit. But I'd already been through therapy three separate times since I was 21, so I knew what I was supposed to do in times of crisis; I just couldn't physically do it. So yeah, go meds if you need them.

Now, if someone would like to bring the freakin' price down on them so I could actually not have to decide whether to eat or buy my medication, life would be grand. I mean, what? Do I LOOK like I'm on Medicare yet!?!?
Oh, whatEVER.

See, my mother is a widow who hasn't learned that life can, and honestly does, go on. Unfortunately, since I'm an only child on the adopted side of my family, there's no buffer between Mother and me, and I'm often treated to conversations such as the one of five minutes ago about a watch she bought from a casino gift shop a couple weeks ago:

Mother: "You know where you put hook it so it stays on? It's all spongy now."
Me: Can you still wear it?
"Yeah, but I've only had it for two weeks. Do you think a jeweler would have leather bands?"
Yeah, they should.
"Oh. I was wondering if you could do me two favors today."
(Silence, since I talked to her last night and she mentioned nothing of this when I talked to her and she knows my schedule is such that I never really know what's going on from day-to-day.)
"Can you come over and take me to cash my check since I didn't ask Yolanda to do it yesterday, and then you can see my watch?"
(sighs) Well, I have an assignment, so I don't know what time I'd be there.
"What time would you get here?"
Mom, I don't know.
"Oh. Then I'll just have Yolanda take me."
All right.

More on this relationship later.
Oh, whatEVER.

Ok, so Greta, my across-the-hall neighbor, and I went to Target tonight so she could pick up her new bedding for when she moves into the house she's buying. (It's lovely, a gold and sage striped theme.) As we're loading stuff into her truck, I notice what had to be a brand spankin' new Chevy Cavalier in that "Caribbean blue" color that only Chevy makes, right? And hanging underneath the bumper? A blue ball sac. No, seriously -- it was made of leather, I think (no, I did NOT touch it), and it was vaguely vein-y and just hanging there like a scrotum. It was even lopsided, for Chrissakes. I'm still trying to figure out the irony, here, but ... yeah. There's someone running around Northwest Indiana with a ball sac hanging from his or her bumper. I mean, I might get the joke if it were hanging out of the trunk or something. But underneath the bumper? I'm ... confused.
Oh, whatEVER.

I'm sure at some point I'll feel the need to talk about how that all happened and why, of all the biological relatives in my life now (and there are a ton of them), the three who went out of their way to find me -- my brother, sister and mother, aka "BFKAS"-- are the only ones I don't get along with. But now ain't that time. I'm more interested in pondering the tidbit that my sister is allegedly living in a $500K house on a Lake within driving distance of me, which is entirely too close for my liking. See, I know that my brother-in-law makes some good coin in pharmaceutical sales, and I don't begrudge him that. And I'm sure they've bought and are able to afford a lovely house with a pool and all the other shit that you need to clean and maintain when you buy a huge house. But $500K? With two kids and my sister not working? Not buyin' it, and not seeing the point of having to make that shit up.

In other news, cousin Bren is about to pop with her second baby girl (eeeee!).
Oh, whatEVER.

So the guy and I talked solar attic fans for a few minutes, and then I ask him his name and position with the store.

"You don't recognize my voice?"
(vaguely recognzing) "You know, actually, I do, but I don't know how. Can you give me a hint where I might know you from?"
"Your youth."
(chuckles)"Oh, Jesus. Who is this?"
"It's ..."

Holy sheep shit, it's the guy with whom I had my first "real" date back the week after I turned 16 (the before-16 dates consisting of clandestine makeout sessions with my 21 year-old Air Force boyfriend in his Mustang, but that's another story for another time). Wow.

He and I were set up through my best friend at the time; they went to school together after she moved. He played bass but was into jazz fusion and classic rock, which made him sophisticated and subversive in my 16 year-old mind. Of course, he was a transparent 17 year-old hormone who broke up with me when I wouldn't put out, but we ended up nailing each other (or attempting to) a couple years later during the summer before my freshman year of college, aka the official start of my late descent into teenage debauchery. He's the first person I ever got high with. And I remember the day, too -- it was in June of 1988 during the hottest summer days ever. It was also the first time I ever drank Ouzo.

He had eye cancer when he was, like, 8, and of course was fitted with a glass eye. I remember telling my crazy friend Mer about it (she was living in Ohio at the time), and the first thing she said was, "Ew! What if it falls down your shirt!?!?!"
Oh, whatEVER.