Put on a little lipstick

I survived Christmas with the in-laws! It was actually a pretty good time. :) 

Wine count: 4ish glasses over two nights (I was using the hotel cups; it was hard to measure exactly)
Xanax count: 0.5mg on Christmas morning
Present count: SO MANY. TOO MANY? (Is there such a thing?)

Favorite present from my parents: The Phantom Tollbooth (Annotated Edition). I squeed for like 10 minutes straight. :D *is a dork*
Favorite present from my in-laws: Phillies winter hat!! (Pretty close runner-up: KitchenAid stand mixer!)
Favorite present from Matt: Ahhhhhh too hard to choose. It all was awesome, but the Shannon Crystal vase was completely unexpected and therefore super awesome. But the Simon & Garfunkel CDs come pretty close. Also Women in Manhattan, which I did a monologue from for a theater class right when I was first going through all the anxiety and depression in 2006, and the monologue was about feeling depressed and lost, and this is so cliche, but reading that monologue was such a breakthrough moment for me of I am not alone and Other people have gone through this. I'd love to play that character for real someday. 
Most WTF present: The aqua satin g-string in size like XXL from Matt's grandmother. (It was a gag gift. I've been traumatized.)

Spent today helping my mom pick out their Christmas tree, and then the rest of the day helping decorate it. And then the tree fell over while we were all eating in the living room, and everyone else was lunging out of the way and I caught it, thank you very much. And I am not a large chica! I am very petite, but I caught that damn tree and kept it from falling over, and then I stood it back up, and then someone else kept it standing up and I drank a large amount of wine. And no one said thank you.

I AM JUST SAYING. Only one ornament broke! If I hadn't caught it, more than one would have, and also it would have landed on me. Really, I had no other choice. (It did kind of land on Matt - but not a lot! - but that's his fault for not catching it first.) However, Matt was instrumental in making sure the tree stayed up the second time around, and also replacing all the ornaments that had fallen off. So he's forgiven in that matter.

Um. Anyway. That aside, it was a great day. We haven't gotten a tree yet, but we're going to soon. 

In other Christmas/wintertime news, put your request in for a Christmas card here!

Tonight my psychiatrist decided that my options for battling the dentist-induced panic attacks were either switching to an SSRI - specifically, Zoloft or Lexapro - or upping from Ativan to Xanax on an as-needed basis. Given that I hated Lexapro's side effects and Zoloft made me suicidal, that really only leaves one option.

So, f-list, does anyone have any experience with Xanax? Anything I should know/be aware of/look out for?

Ok, so. I am not a fan of going to the dentist. Never have been, even when I liked the dentists themselves. But because I know that I'll freak out once I get in the chair, I take two Ativan an hour in advance so that I should be pretty chill by the time I get there. This worked really well for my last cleaning (only the second with this dentist), and when I had cavities filled a few months ago, it worked...less well. I can't stand the noises. So my dentist had me put in my earbuds and told me to play the music as loud as I liked, and  they'd tap my hand if they needed me to do something, e.g., stop biting their finger. Those combined worked amazingly.

Today I had to go in to get impressions made for a nightguard, because evidently I grind my teeth at night, and evidently that's not real good for you. I had impressions made when I was a kid, when I got braces. It was awful. I hated it. So today I made sure that I took the ativan at 2 for a 3:00 appointment, was feeling nice and mellow in the waiting room. Get into the dentist's chair, and the assistant tries to fit me for the top mold - and I'm gagging and trying not to cry and she can't even get it all the way in my mouth. I calm down, she tries again, same result but slightly more crying. (I was so embarrassed and upset with myself, and so frustrated that this was even happening since I'd taken the medication.) So at the suggestion of another dentist who works in the office (I assume; I'd never seen him before), she tried to fit the bottom mold. Ok. Got that one in. That meant it was time to make the impression.

I remembered hating them, choking and trying not to gag. I remembered pretty accurately. They got me to breathe through my nose and I kept my eyes tightly shut, and it was awful, but I did it. And then once it was out, I burst into hysterical, hyperventilating tears. They brought me a glass of water, but I could not catch my breath. And my dentist said, "Ok. Well, we'll send this one to the lab, and how about you come back sometime next week so we can do the other one?"

My dentist is awesome, by the way. I was supposed to have a cleaning in June, right when all the shit was going down with the house and my job and all, and I walked in, she asked me how I was, and I burst into tears. "Maybe you should come back another time, We'll call you in a few weeks. Take care of yourself, all right?"

I could not have been more grateful to her for that suggestion. I honestly do not think I would have gotten through a second round without a full-fledged anxiety attack. I eventually got my breathing under control, washed my face, took a cab home. That was probably around 4:00; I walked inside the house, and burst into tears. I still haven't gotten myself together more than an hour later. 

I hate the way this feels. I hate that the ativan didn't work, or didn't work well enough. I hate that just about everyone in the world can go to the dentists without any problem at all, whereas I can only remember a single time that I was not crying during some point of the visit. What is wrong with me?

1 in 8 people struggle with hunger.

You may have seen the commercials or the billboards or the bus stop ads. They show up around this time of year to promote feedamerica.org. I don't doubt their statistics - but I do take issue with their wording.

struggle with hunger

I wonder why they didn't say struggle with poverty or with having enough to eat or with being able to feed their family. I guess it's not as catchy. It doesn't fit on a poster as well. But to say you struggle with something implies that the thing you're struggling with is bad, is wrong, is something to be overcome or defeated. People struggle with depression, with anger, with alcoholism, with an injury, with illness. 

Those are things to overcome. But hunger is, in itself, natural. Hunger is not the problem in this situation. Hunger is a symptom.

There are people who struggle with hunger, situations in which hunger is something to overcome. I can't let myself be hungry; I've just eaten lunch. I can't give into the hunger; if I do, I won't stop eating. I can't let hunger win; I've already had 500 calories today.

But that's not what they're talking about. 

Being in poverty is not, to me, the same as struggling with hunger. I think most people who see the ads will jump to the desire conclusion of hunger = poverty. Most probably won't react the way I did; most people probably don't think the way I do. But it's something worth considering.

Let me tell you something about my in-laws. They think that anything worth getting to is worth getting to early – like, insanely early. Which is why my brother-in-law Mike showed up at our house at 6 o’clock on Saturday morning.
 
And he was late, by the way. He was originally supposed to get there around five. Keep in mind that we aren’t allowed to check into our condo until three o’clock in the afternoon.
 
Yeah.
 
Sunday saw the arrival (in the evening) of Matt’s mom and (sometime after I went to bed) Mike’s friend Adam. Even though we spent much of the day on the beach relaxing, everyone was pretty high-strung by the time his mom arrived, culminating in lots of passive aggression and me eating half a box of chocolate for dinner while watching Casablanca. I wish I were making that up.
 
Monday was more beach. They’re nice beaches, big, less rocky than Cape May. Water’s warmer, but the surf’s rougher. All five of us had dinner at a fancy seafood place, where they evidently have a “doggie bag” policy if you don’t finish your bottle of wine. I did not get to test this out, but I really really wanted to. (The rest of us all drink, but Matt’s mom doesn’t, and disapproves of it, so we abstained. It was a long week)
 
Tuesday was…more beach. Lots of quality time with Matt’s mom while the boys went golfing, by which I mean a lot of awkward small talk. I started and finished two books, and got most of the way through a third. I could have finished it, but even I get a little bored of reading after almost eight hours straight.
 
Wednesday, Matt and I had a date day – spent most of the afternoon on the boardwalk, and then had to rush back because I had a phone interview. We had a huge lunch around 2, so we didn’t leave for dinner until after 7:30. Also, I finally got around to reading the five-pound September issue of Vogue, so expect a belated Fall Fashion Trends post sometime soon.
 
At dinner I had this fantastic Australian shiraz (“Little Roo”), which I am definitely going to try to locate. A-maz-ing. I played skeeball at one of the boardwalk arcades and Matt set three consecutive high scores on the basket-shooting game. We gave our tickets away to a little kid to add to her total (the other option was buying a sticky frog and a tootsie roll). Then! Polish water ice! Polish water ice is awesome. The difference between it and Italian ice is…subtle. But it’s still awesome.
 
Thursday: “Nothing screams whatever that guy’s trying to scream like doing whatever that guy’s doing.” My brother-in-law, the philosopher.  Did I mention that our vacation overlaps exactly with the official Delmarva Bike Week? More motorcycles and -cyclists than I have ever seen in one place. It is loud.
 
The problem with beach vacations is that you start out the week already feeling insecure about your bikini body, and as the week goes on you eat so much food (between going out to eat and the omnipresent beach fries and potato chips at dinner) that you get more insecure instead of less.
 
However, between a gift card and sale prices, I did manage to spend only $56 on a $380 necklace, so at the very least I remain entirely secure of my shopping skills.
 
Went shopping with Matt’s mom on Friday, which was more successful than Tuesday, if only because small talk is made a lot easier by the presence of knickknacks and tchotchkes. After dinner I returned to the room to watch the Phillies lose in extra innings, and Matt bought me a painting. <3
 
Today we returned HOME, FINALLY, and then I cleaned for three hours. There’s another couple hours of cleaning to do, easy, but it can wait until tomorrow. There are more important things to…like drink celebrate the Phillies clinching the NL East!

And then there was an earthquake.

I'm sure it was way worse for people in the DC Metro area - not too much destruction up here in Philly, but my building sure did sway, and I'm on the top floor. Yikes.

Title: The Opening Universe (The Awful Mystery) (1/2)
Author: golden_d 
Characters: Jack, Suzie, OCs
Rating: PG-13 for language, dark themes (Trigger warning for suicide)
Word Count: ~7,500 (~17,000 total)
Summary: Welcome to the year 2000 and the first Torchwood team that Jack can call his own—and they’re just as broken as he is.
Author's notes: Beta credit to the always amazing 51stcenturyfox; Googol is all hers.

( Part 1 )

So I am taking a break from the great ordeal that is packing, because my feet hurt and my back hurt and I've been packing since 5:30 except for about 45 minutes in the middle when I got to eat pizza and read a book, Guy Gavriel Kay's The Summer Tree. I bought it at a used bookstore for like $3, because I needed something to read and because I remembered hearing good things about the trilogy it's part of, The Fionavar Tapestry. It's an interesting premise, but I feel like in the 1980s there were a lot of fantasy books written in such a way that made them sound pretty much like an RPG transcript, and...this is one of those books. So. Awkward writing, too many characters, but a great depth of plot and world that make me hang on and keep reading. 

 One set of neighbors is having a huge screaming fight. The other set has evidently decided that midnight is the perfect time to hang pictures and is hammering nails into the wall. WTF, neighbors. I will be so glad to move.