As I’ve mentioned before, I am a big fan of psychotherapy. Although medication has had a greater role in my successful depression treatment, psychotherapy helped me to recognize my inner demons and banish or deal with them, thereby leading to my becoming a much happier person overall, which I would assume is helpful in fighting depression.
Treatment with psychotherapy is a tad more complicated than treatment with medication, however. With antidepressant therapy, once you’ve found the right medication (admittedly, sometimes a lengthy process) you basically take your medicine and deal with side effects. Psychotherapy demands more in terms of the right conditions and a commitment from the individual. It’s fairly common for roadblocks to come up that hinder the process. I’ve experienced two of these roadblocks in the course of my therapy, so I thought I’d pass on what I’ve learned about getting past them.
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Our friend Kate had a baby in October. I finally got around to knitting a blanket and a matching bowl for the baby and her room:
They’re both knit out of Lion Brand Landscapes in Pastel Meadows. For the bowl I used my felted bowl pattern. For the blanket, I just cast on stitches on a number 15 needle until it seemed about the right width and did seed stitch for the first and last three rows, and the first and last three stitches on each end of the row. I obviously did the rest in stockinette stitch.
Then, for Kate I made fingerless gloves since she’s always cold and works at the computer a lot:
I used Plymouth’s Baby Alpaca Grande (one of my favorite yarns) in 2691. I used the same pattern that I made the Noro Kureyon Fingerless Mitts from, but shortened the length.
Your office desk harbors far more bacteria than your workplace restroom, and if you’re a woman, chances are your workspace has more germs than your male co-workers’, a new research report shows.
Women have three to four times the number of bacteria in, on and around their desks, phones, computers, keyboards, drawers and personal items as men do, the study by University of Arizona professor Charles Gerba showed. Gerba, a professor of soil, water and environmental sciences, tested more than 100 offices on the UA campus and in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oregon and Washington, D.C. The $40,000 study was commissioned by the Clorox Co.
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Aaaagh! Where’s my Lysol!?
“Hi, nice to meet you. I’m an introvert.”
Last night I went to a course on event planning held by UC Berkeley extension. Although it didn’t dawn on me at the time, it was apparently the perfect opportunity to network. Even the course presenter encouraged us to network during the break. At break time, I made a beeline for the ladies’ room, where I stayed until the break was about over.
And sure enough, this morning my husband, who would hold the Olympic gold medal for networking if there were such a sport asked me, “So, did you do any networking?”
“No, I don’t network. You know that. I’m not going to give just anyone my email and telephone number. I don’t want to get to know someone until I know if I want to get to know them.”
He looked blank.
“Okay, I know, that doesn’t make sense. But I just can’t do it. It’s not me.”
It’s not me because I am an introvert. You might not know it if you were standing next to me in a line somewhere, because I have no problem chatting. I’m animated and talkative and you’ll probably learn a lot about me in five minutes. Just don’t ask for my email address or phone number unless we discover we’re long-lost relatives.
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I just spent a week lying in bed, doing nothing except watching TV and reading. The laundry has piled up into mountains. (How can three people wear so many clothes? I think we have too many clothes.) We would have run out of dishes if my husband hadn’t been diligently doing them. (I think we need more dishes.)
I haven’t even used the new Roomba robot vacuum my husband gave me for Christmas for the whole week, and all I have to do is put it down and watch it go. Which I really, really love. I mean, does it get better than that? It actually does a better job vacuuming than I do. And I don’t have to lift a finger! I just can’t wait until there’s one that can clean the toilets and the shower stall that seems to sprout mildew as soon as I finish cleaning it.
There have been repercussions. My four year old son has decided that he’s tired of his mom saying, “Honey, I’m just too tired to (fill in the blank),” and is acting out. Or maybe he’s just being four years old and wants to make sure that his recent and long-delayed conversion to toilet versus diapers hasn’t caused us to go soft. And I don’t exactly think that I’ve been there for my husband during this period. I’ve been completely self-absorbed.
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