Mood Update and Painting Clothes

I’ve been getting a lot of foot rubs from my husband. This is a sure sign that I’ve been crying a lot in the afternoons. Well, I guess late afternoon and early evening to be specific. And night time doesn’t always get any better. I have a really hard time relaxing- even watching TV feels like work. I was so relieved when the akathisia finally went away, but now things are not so good again. I had talked to my psychiatrist about this a while back, and we discussed behavioral solutions to the mood drop. I really did think it was situational and not medication-related, so I sought out adult education courses and tried to go to the library or ride my bike to the cafe for a second round of writing. None of these options materialized, mostly because I have no motivation when I get home from the first visit to the cafe. Having written and typed a blog, or worked on photos, or done some editing, or all of the above, I just want to relax when I get home between 4 and 5pm. Exercise is usually in the morning/midday when I wake up, and then I shower, eat breakfast, and get dressed. And for me, the exercise, basic self-care, and writing at the cafe amounts to a full day for me. And so what do I do when I’m done for the day? Sometimes I’ve tried to just keep working, and that can help, but I don’t usually have the energy for that. What ends up happening most of the time is I lay down in our bedroom with the curtains drawn, thinking and dozing, and then usually end up wide awake with horribly negative thoughts. Then the crying starts, my husband tries to comfort me, I take a Klonopin, and I might end up getting an intensely painful foot massage (it helps with the emotional pain). This combination of Klonopin and foot rubs will calm me down, but fill me with guilt and remorse for being such a burden, and just such a downer in general. My husband never gets to relax since I can’t relax. And so he’s run ragged taking care of me, picking up my slack (doing chores, etc.), all while trying to get his work done, manage the house, plan business trips, look for future work, and work his “day job” tutoring at a local college. So if there’s something I can do to improve the evenings, I’m eager to find it. My great hope right now is that in Berlin I’ll be able to walk to a cafe twice a day instead of just once. There are so many coffee shops in walking distance that it just doesn’t seem like as big a deal to go out again in the late afternoon. Maybe at that time I could just listen to an audiobook or read books on my computer. But for the time being, I’m just watching YouTube in the dark to get through. There’s something so soothing about watching those incredibly detailed clothing reviews and styling tips. Now mornings- mornings are good in general. I can be silly and laugh hysterically with my husband, and I’m just more game for things.

Today we went to the dump to get rid of a broken air conditioner. Our last tenant left it in a recycling bin while moving out, which thoroughly confused us, but it probably just indicates simple ignorance. Before I owned a home, it never occurred to me that you actually have to pay money to get rid of trash. We do have free (tax-funded) curbside pickup for household garbage here, but for construction projects we’ve hired dumpsters or paid by the pound at the dump. And so we made the 25 minute trek to the state landfill/recycling center and paid $12 to get rid of it. I went along on this little trip to try to ensure that my husband did not throw his back out right before our trip lifting said air conditioner on his own. I think it worked.

But when doing such chores, I’ve learned to wear appropriate clothing. That doesn’t mean leggings for the gym or the jacket you wear to work. Clothes can really get wrecked from cleaning, painting, and any kind of heavy lifting (stains and snags are common). And so I have a small capsule of “painting clothes” reserved especially for such occasions. They’ve already made an appearance in anticipation of painting and cleaning our rental apartment between tenants (we had a new tenant move in on June 1st).

The painting clothes capsule’s 11 items consist of:

1 pair old sneakers

1 pair rubber boots

2 pairs old socks

1 pair skinny jeans

1 pair pajama shorts

2 T-shirts

1 long-sleeved thermal top

1 zip-up hoodie

1 fleece-lined vest

This little assortment of things allows me to paint or deep clean in warm or cold weather, rake leaves, shovel snow (with a coat and hat), move furniture, tile bathrooms, and mow the lawn if need be. Now my husband does take care of most of these things the past couple of years due to my depression, but I hope to be able to chip in more and more like I used to. And I realize a lot of people out there have “people” to do such things, but we’re landlords of a 3-family house and do a lot of home improvements on our own. We gutted our own apartment, insulated our own walls, framed walls, skimcoated walls, tiled two bathrooms and our kitchen backsplash, poured our own shower floor, installed our own kitchen cabinets, installed our own molding, built our own vanity out of a dresser from Craigslist, and have painted just about every inch of the 3-story Victorian, ten-foot walls, ceilings, hallways and all. While these clothing items might not fit into a “real” minimalist’s backpack, they are utterly necessary for me.