Medium Dawn Felagund of the Fountain

Friday afternoon, I happened on this blog post on Hyperbole and a Half. Allie, the blogger, has been away for more than a year, dealing with severe depression. She writes--and illustrates!--about it in her return post.

It made me cry and laugh. It's an incredibly insightful and brave post.

I work with kids and young adults, some of whom have severe mental illnesses, some of those who suffer from depression. Some of my students have attempted suicide or periodically disappear for a few days or weeks because they are being hospitalized for their illnesses. I also had a major depressive episode when I was 19 and have dealt periodically with less serious "mood issues" since then. There are so many misunderstandings about mental illness, depression in particular. I think it's hard for "normal" people to understand to have a brain on the emotional equivalent of a bungee cord; once you fall over the edge, there are forces beyond your control. It's the whole "snap out of it" mentality ("Why can't you make your fish be alive again?"--read the post and that will make sense! :) and it's hard not to be angry at people who think that way. They haven't been there and just don't know.

I think that's why I love Allie's post so much. She makes it possible for people to go there and maybe understand, even a little.

I love and loathe my brain, depending on the day. I love that it's pretty smart and can do cool things like write stories that people tend to get into, and it's apparently pretty funny (my coworkers tell me I'm hilarious, which is weird, since I've never thought of myself as a funny person) and capable of empathy for and emotional connection even with difficult people (hence the work I do). I loathe the dark side of all that: the bizarre thoughts and dwelling on unpleasant things (blood! violence!) and dysthymic funks and random, formless anxiety and its capacity to cause me physical pain (its new favorite way to announce "I'm stressed!" being pain that radiates down the right side of my neck and into my right shoulder). But it's my brain, so I keep trudging on with it sloshing around between my ears doing its thing and trying my best, despite it, to do mine.

Also, the music choice, I swear, is coincidental. Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness is one of my favorite--if not my favorite--albums of all time. My sister bought it in 1995 when it first came out, and I promptly stole it ("borrowed it") from her--I still have it! It's downstairs in the basement on the CD rack! Anyway, my iPod is broken so I'm limited to Spotify on the laptop, and I have a surprisingly limited imagination when it comes to thinking of music to listen to. It's pretty much Mellon Collie, the LotR soundtrack, the Fleet Foxes, or other stuff from the '90s that I'm too embarrassed to confess to!

Okay, so first of all, I caved. I'm now on Tumblr. I'm still figuring out how it works! I haven't posted anything yet. I'm planning to use it for fannish and writerly stuff only; this place will still be where I babble about a combination of RL, writerly, and fannish stuff. I'd certainly appreciate anyone who wants to follow me or who has any good ideas of who I should be following. Like I said, I'm clueless at this point.

I've updated my profile! It's needed it for a long time now.

And, finally, apparently Skype "unfriended" at least two people who I had added. I barely use Skype for fannish stuff, but if I friended you there and you're no longer friended, please let me know so that I can add you back. I have no idea how this happened. I don't unfriend people except in very extenuating circumstances (that's in my profile now!) and felt horrible that I apparently left at least two people wondering what they had done wrong.

Monday, April 1, the day after the Grand Canyon trip, was pretty low-key. Luxor had just opened a Titanic exhibit that Bobby and I went to see in the afternoon. Okay, okay, go ahead and laugh: Titanic was possibly my first fandom, unless one counts playing Hey Dude with my sister when we were kids. The Titanic movie came out when I was sixteen, and while my classmates were mooning over Jack and Rose, I became fascinated by the history, which spurred a spate of book purchases and the construction of a website (that never made it to the web) in Microsoft Front Page ... so yeah, sixteen-year-old me is a lot like current me it seems.

The Titanic exhibit was really good: a display of various artifacts brought up from the ship, coupled with, of course, a description of the ship's brief life and profiles of various passengers. It was informative without verging into being pedantic and blended the various threads of the story very well to keep it interesting. The exhibit had reconstructions of parts of the ship (including the grand staircase that pretty much anyone who's seen the movie remembers) that were really cool for a one-time nerd about this stuff like me. There was a poignant irony in the survival of so many delicate things--porcelain cups, letters, clothing, delicate jewelry--brought up from the deep after a hundred years, in a disaster where so many people died. The showpiece was the "Big Piece," a large section from the side of the ship. I hadn't realized that the ship is decaying so quickly now that no trace of it may remain in as few as a couple of decades.

Photos weren't allowed, so you don't get pictures of all of this stuff!

Luxor is the Egyptian-themed hotel-casino. The decor was very cool, but the people were very pushy and annoying. We discovered, as we journeyed in and out of the various hotel-casinos, that some of them have legions of employees devoted to trying to convince you to go to "free" shows and meals--I put "free" in quotes because I'm not so dumb to think that there isn't a gimmick, especially in Vegas--and it's nothing to be accosted by one of these people every few minutes while strolling around or heading to a particular place. It had the effect of making Bobby and me not want to go back, if we could help it; Bobby was going to go play over at Luxor, since it was basically across the street from the Tropicana, but decided against it because of the pushiness of the people there.

Here it is.



( Rest of Diary for April 1 & 2 and Pictures below the Cut )

This semester has been really intense, so I have not been writing in my journal and, therefore, I don't think I ever mentioned that we were going to Vegas for Spring Break. My dad turned 70 on his last birthday, and I think this had some sort of goading effect on him, as in he realized that he doesn't have all the time in the world to do various things that he wants to do; my grandmother (his mom) only decided she wanted to travel once she was too infirm to do so. Anyway, long story short, my parents invited Bobby and me to go with them to Vegas for Spring Break, so here we are.

The funny thing is that, when I was a kid, Vegas was constantly held over us as the crowning achievement in vacations, always set for next year. Next year, next year ... considering that, prior to about 1:30 PM EST yesterday, the furthest west I'd been was West Virginia, next year never came then, but I guess it finally has now.

The flight was uneventful. Our past few flights have been to Europe, and it's seemingly impossible to get a flight from the east coast U.S. to Europe that doesn't leave at night, so it was nice to fly during the day for once, rather than trying unsuccessfully to sleep and arriving exhausted. The highlight of the flight was flying over the Grand Canyon and the desert more generally. I loved the desert as a kid (in my imagination since, as noted above, "next year" never came!) and the closest I've come to this point is the dry forest in southern Puerto Rico. The middle "flyover" states were pretty uneventful except that the roads were very, very straight, and I was in the midst of thinking that the world looks pretty much the same everywhere from the air when the landscape began to change, and the earth went brown and then red, with the mesas sketched in long, graceful curves, the stretches of red-brown land occasionally broken by mountains, some of them with snow at the tops. Then the Grand Canyon, which was ... grand.

Vegas looks pretty much like it does on movies and TV. This is going to be an interesting experience, for the people-watching alone. After we arrived last night, we had dinner reservations and tickets to see the Beatles-themed Cirque du Soleil show Love. I was tired from the week leading up to our departure, which was crammed with preparing for a week's absence from my various obligations, and already footsore and hungry, being as it was hours past suppertime by my mental clock. It was only a two-block walk, according to Dad; Bobby and I, never having been here before, took him at his word. It wasn't a two-block walk; it was almost a two-mile walk that made us late for our dinner reservation, to say nothing of the fact that I had no energy for such a walk, and my feet were dead by the time we got there. I love walking places--I think it's the best way to get to know a place--but last night was not the night for it.

The show was great. There were two young men two rows in front of us who looked like Beavis and Butthead and showed up drunk with huge drinks in their hands who got kicked out after the one passed out in his seat. It's Vegas, I guess! Given the costs of show tickets, though, to say nothing of the probable cost of those drinks, that was an expensive no-shit story to tell their friends, if getting kicked out of a Cirque du Soleil show is worth bragging about. I guess to some people it is! It definitely added a little something to the show, especially considering that a theme in the show was challenging authority, so there are hippies on the stage being accosted by cops in riot gear, while two kids that look like Beavis and Butthead are being dragged up the steps by a blond woman in a business suit. An interesting contrast and sad commentary on the rebellious nature of my generation!

Then we took a cab back to the hotel.

It is now a little after nine. I have pruned by email inbox and answered/handled what I must; Bobby is snowboarding today. He would find a place to go snowboarding in the desert! So I'm with my parents all day today. I'm going to call them now to see about breakfast, then plan to spend the day by the pool, but before anyone gets too excited that I'm loosening up in the sin-saturated desert climate of Las Vegas, Nevada, I'll be reading for grad school while I do. I did get all of my writing assignments done, so I won't have to write while I'm here, but the reading is unavoidable.

Wow, what a night. What a game. My heart was pounding for most of the night. Bobby and I hosted the party for this one, and we had a great time. Pictures below the jump!

( Super Bowl Champs!!! )

It was 70F (21C) in Woodlawn this afternoon. Seventy! Seventy, in late January, in central Maryland! Seventy!!

Remember, folks, that global warming is a hoax created by liberal scientists with, of course, the help of the liberal [gotcha] media. In fact, if I had set up a video camera outside last night, I bet I would have seen some clandestine climatologist fiddling with the car thermometer while Bobby, the Goldens, and I slumbered naively. Really, it was about 40F today. But why did it feel like 70F? (I couldn't keep the students out of the damn door today, not that I could blame them.) Why, because brainwashing embedded in liberal print and television media has cleverly convinced you that it is actually warm outside when, in fact, it's pretty cold. That's how that works, if you were wondering.

It's raining like crazy right now and thunderstorms are predicted for later tonight. Thunderstorms! (Actually, it's Jesus bowling with the angels in Heaven, but that damned liberal media has also brainwashed us all to think it's thunder and treat it as a weather anomaly rather that a proper celebratory occasion.)

My legs and feet hurt like hell right now. The school got its money's worth out of me today. All of my classes were firing on all cylinders (which happens less often than Jesus bowling with the angels in Heaven!), and so I was on my feet all day, running around like a goof, being properly erudite and entertaining. Last period, during the twerps' class, it must have sounded like a small riot was going on in my room, but we were actually doing a cooperative activity about indirect characterization. It was fun, albeit noisy. It was the twerps, so there was scuffling for a place at the board and much outshouting of each other. I also discovered that one of my 9th graders--ADHD and presently off his meds--reacts like a cat to a flashlight beam when I shine my laser pointer on the floor. By last period, yes, yes, I will admit that on at least two occasions I used that to keep him semi-focused.

Tomorrow morning, the seniors are watching a documentary about King Arthur and the 10th graders are going to do at least a little independent work, so the Ms.-W-T-tap-dance-for-the-students routine is going to be somewhat turned down. Maybe I'll do a nice, soft, interpretive dance routine instead. (Hey, I do act out vocabulary words sometimes.) For the afternoon classes, all bets are off. They're my most energetic groups, and a lot of times, it's tap-dance routine or get-trampled-like-a-scatter-rug-in-an-elephant-stampede.

Okay, the weather alarm just went off ... we're under a tornado watch in Carroll County. I'll let y'all figure out the conspiracy theory behind that one. I'm beat.

I say "modified" because I want to do this, but as many of you know, I'm a one-fandom girl, so there's no point in asking you to ask me about my fandoms. There's only one! I could maybe answer most of these for True Blood, despite never participating in the online fandom, because Bobby and I constitute a fandom-of-two in our house, and I do occasionally talk with some of y'all too about it. But the only fandom I really deeply know is the Tolkien fandom, focusing on The Silmarillion. So here goes!

( Tolkien Character M-Word Thing )

Well, it's official! The Ravens are off to their second Super Bowl, against the San Francisco 49ers, in two weeks!

\0/ \0/ \0/ \0/ \0/ \0/

Last night, they solidly beat the Patriots in Foxborough, 28-13, to win the AFC Championship. This was much-needed after last year's should've-been-a-victory, same team, same place. Baltimore is going wild! Here is Federal Hill last night, after the Ravens won.



This playoffs preceded much like 2000's championship season did. ( Football Rambling Not Likely to Be Interesting to Most People )

We watched the game over my inlaws' house. Even my dad watched it! :^O We brought the Goldens but won't make that mistake again; Lancelot, a.k.a. Phil, has become afraid of loud cheering and spent most of the evening trying to climb into various people's laps. He's small for a Golden, but 68 lbs. is still too heavy for a lap dog. My Ray Lewis jersey is worn beyond recognition, so I wore my McNair jersey. (I had a moment of stupid superstition of the kind oft-practiced during football viewing if it was poor luck to wear the jersey of a dead player, but I adored McNair when he played for the Titans, adored him even more when he played for us, and so scolded myself for silliness and wore it anyway. Ghost!Steve, it seems, did bring us luck. Having been folded in a drawer for years now [I actually lost it for a while], ghost!Steve will definitely be getting some mileage in the weeks to come.) Every time we scored a touchdown, I did Steve's touchdown ... whatever that is.



Luckily, I had lots of occasions to do that!

If I know Bal'more from 2000, the next few weeks will be wild. Strings of purple lights, purple spotlights, and Ravens car flags have already made their appearance. We saw our first Ravens tent in Hanover on Saturday; in 2000, a big deal was made because just about every gas station had a Ravens tent selling unauthorized merchandise on the corner. This is of course an extra huge occasion since Ray Lewis has the chance to make his last game a Super Bowl victory. What could be a better retirement gift for someone who has done so much for this city? Go Ravens!

I am a day late on my toast because, as circumstance would have it, I was busy at work yesterday and then busy in my free time finishing up the SWG newsletter. While evidence of my membership in the "deplorable cult" would likely not please Tolkien were he alive to know my reasons for being late, I wish him a happy belated birthday nonetheless, complete with a toast with my travel tea mug!

( Picture and More beneath the Cut )

Bobby and I went to see The Hobbit last night at a midnight show. Midnight shows aren't something we get to indulge in often, but we decided quite a while back to make an exception given someone's *ahem* Tolkien obsession. We bought our tickets as soon as they went on sale and took the next day off (today) from work. Admittedly, last night, I wasn't feeling very awesome by the time it came to leave, but arriving at a theater packed with fellow Tolkien geeks had a revitalizing effect, and at 11:59 PM, the show began.

( The Rest beneath the Cut for Spoilers Sake )