up and down, and in the end it's only round and round and round

Friday, 07/29/16, 9:31am

I'm doing better than I was yesterday and the day before. I did get a short run in yesterday afternoon while the boys were on their bikes. Might be aiming for that again today. Maybe we'll have a dance party with some 80's music too. Those things help me.

Yesterday, despite having a really successful afternoon with the boys (with the aforesaid running/biking as well as some mini-pool time), I was never fully recovered. OK, I have to take a second to share some pictures and videos of the afternoon.

I relaxed in a camping chair, with some cold water, while the boys set up a water slide

Still wasn't perfectly easy to function, but I was trying my damnedest

We had to make some repairs prior to filling up the pool, as well as during. 

As of this morning, the pool is still about halfway full so I guess we did a good job!

They had fun, and that helped my mood more than anything else. It was fun, it was enriching fun, which maybe Minecraft is in its own way. Nasser recently found some data showing that video games, where they require creativity and imagination, are more enriching to children than television shows. (I would normally now link to the article explaining this, because I think backing up what you say is very important, however, I can't find that exact study at the moment. Will post in comments if I ever come across it.) I'm finding that there really are a lot of benefits to video games, in both what I read as well as what I see in my kids. They play Minecraft together, cooperatively. They learn to play cooperatively in larger groups when they play Minecraft with friends and family. They often play with Nasser, which I think is a key benefit. It is time spent together, they talk most of the time about what they're doing and strategies, and Nasser can help guide them to keep it beneficial.

And it's not like they spend all their time playing video games. They are often playing, however, when I'm blogging. Or showering. This summer, I've allowed it more than I would like to in the long term. However, 1. it is summer and I do believe that enjoyment of the summer is important. 2. Their uncle died at the beginning of the summer. We're still dealing with that and recovering from it. I don't feel that I need to justify myself further. And I'm not really justifying to you, the reader. Perhaps to some extent. But I'm also justifying to myself. Because I carry a lot of guilt and shame over the amount of screen time they get sometimes.

Being in a depressive episode, like I was yesterday, I definitely allow more screens. Because I want to hide upstairs and not have the kids try to find me and demand things from me. I don't want them seeing me when I'm sobbing over the thoughts that are going through my head.

Yesterday I put out a slight plea to facebook for some love. Just a little "can I have some virtual hugs today?" kind of thing. Many many of my friends and family responded with love. It was nice and it was something that helped yesterday. It didn't make me totally recovered, other people really don't have that affect when I'm truly depressed, but it helped. I said the other day that I felt like I was in a deep hole and couldn't see which way was up. It was like that most of the day yesterday.

Honestly, I had one big goal yesterday, and that was keeping the suicidal, totally hopeless and helpless thoughts away. I succeeded, without the need for Nasser coming home or someone coming over and taking over care for the kids. Because, yeah, some days, those thoughts are right below the surface, and if I'm not careful, they will consume me. I don't write this to scare anyone, and I hope it doesn't (please remember right now I'm doing rather well and not depressed in any way). I write it to share what I think is actually somewhat common with major depression. Maybe? For me, it's not that uncommon, to at least fall into the hopeless thoughts, for when I'm in a depressive episode. It's not how I feel all the time, and I do think that I have more good, happy moments in my life, than depressed.

I am starting up some mood tracking again. I think that I unofficially do it with the blog, since I'm often writing and I often write about my mood. :) But I wanted something where I could easily graph the results and get an idea of the overall trend. It's something I plan to show my doctor once I have some data to say, do we still think I'm doing the right things or am I worse than we thought? I've only tracked a handful of times, although I did track several times yesterday. The entry for today is just about the opposite of yesterday's.

We're keeping today fairly low key again. Although we might make a trip to Target for some groceries, as well as some shopping with some gift cards the boys received for their birthdays.

Lots of love to all my readers. I hope today is fine for you, as I hope it will be for me.

when I come home cold and tired, it's good to warm my bones beside the fire

Wednesday, 07/06/16, 2:16am (back to mountain time)

Well I wrote much of a blog post on my phone on the plane last night, but I'm too used to automatic saves when I write on my Chromebook. The phone app for blogger: not nearly as good as the app for Chromebook. Sigh. The entire post is gone. No one will ever read it.

I am writing (again on my phone, but this time I will save before turning off my phone screen again and likely save often) right now instead of sleeping, because honestly I'm feeling rather awake. I picked up an iced coffee in the Seattle airport late this afternoon for Nasser and me to share but they did not have decaf iced coffee, only regular. I got it anyway.

So here I am, wired at 2 am. Writing at least part of a blog post.

The flight went pretty well although kids did not sleep. There was some cute Minecraft to be had by all the boys.

I sat with the kiddos just in the beginning. Some eating, some looking out windows, some Minecraft, and RG actually showed me a bit of one of his worlds, one that friends have played in.

I love this series of photos from the boys eating their Panera Bread desserts. We picked them up after lunch, yeah we had Panera in Seattle (but we needed comfort food for all of us!). Cinnamon roll for RG. Candy cookie for TK.

Someone on the plane said that last shot was Mt St Helens. I was sitting on the wrong side of the plane, and on the aisle, so my plane pictures are certainly not the best, but it was very cool to see. Also saw Mt Rainier coming out of Seattle. Did not get a pic of that either.

Back to Minecraft, I have to admit, although I've been skeptical of it for some time and didn't get the draw to it, it kinda makes sense now. Not sure if I'll really get into playing (even if I've been known to play video games here and there), but the idea of being creative and building worlds together with my kids sounds appealing.

RG and TK tame wild ocelots in the game to get pet cats. It's pretty cute.

And they play together in eachother's worlds when they have WiFi. Sometimes with just the two of them, sometimes they play together with their cousins (like they did a fair amount of while on vacation with them), and now sometimes Nasser joins them. The cousins would call out, hey Uncle Nasser, can I join your world? There is something remarkably cute about them all playing together, nicely of course is the best, but there do end up being disagreements sometimes.

The flight didn't land in Denver until almost midnight mountain time. Really we don't have much to complain about; kids did well over all, although TK had a meltdown on the bus which poor Nasser dealt with. I was next to RG, who still had exciting stuff to tell me. They both got some much needed sleep in the car and transferred to bed decently well. Stressful at times but again, overall OK.

It is nice to be home. I'm tired, despite what the caffeine is doing to my head. And I was ready to be home.

We've had a good trip, saw some of the friends we wanted to see, missed a few others unfortunately. Saw some of the sights we wanted to see, missed many many others. On Friday, after the half marathon, we travelled from close to Canada, along the water, to Seattle where we moved into a new house rental along with my brother and his son who joined us for the second half of the trip. We had a pretty great house rental in West Seattle, close to Alki Beach (fantastic place and owner, nice location). None of them are ever perfect for your group but I think both houses worked out quite well, especially considering our last minute plan making for the trip. It's really all been planned in the last month-ish.

Friday night we saw a good friend of ours from growing up and her husband,

and on Saturday our portion of the group went to see Snoqualmie Falls to do some "easy" hiking down to the lower part of the falls and back up.

On Sunday, we met up with another friend and her 1 year old, saw Pike's Place Market, ate lunch at the famous Lowell's, and went to the Seattle Aquarium. 

I love this next series of group selfies we took outside the Aquarium. Z goes in for the hair pull- so adorable!

We saw my cousin and his beautiful family that evening for dinner. Then on Monday, we took a water taxi, took a ferry, ran to catch the ferry back after walking around Bremerton, and ran to catch the water taxi after the ferry came back to Seattle. 

We even got a decent view of distant fireworks from the rental house that evening.

It is now 3:20am, and I still can't sleep. So it is back to writing.

Today, or I suppose technically it was yesterday, we checked out of the house rental at around 10am, but our flight wasn't until 8:30pm. It really ended up being a decent day overall. We drove through Seattle a bit, around Green Lake, and we ended up south at the Museum of Flight.

RG trying out the cockpit

You can barely see him in there!

TK was scared to go in without Daddy

(Oh that child- he explains to me why he wants Daddy to sit next to him on the plane instead of me with "I love you, but I love Daddy MORE!")

((sometimes this thought can trigger a depressive episode, but today, it's ok. kids have phases of preferring one parent more than the other, and that's normal. totally completely normal. sometimes I gotta just remind myself of that.))

the boys got to design and then fly their own plane in the simulator.

the choices they made were around the shape of the body, wings, and tail

for a balance of speed and maneuverability in the air. very cool activity.

the Daddy/TK team got second place out of all the kids/adults from the day

Looking back on it, although stressful, the museum was good. Kids loved it, although keeping track of them was tricky because they wanted to run in opposite directions continuously. We ended up seeing Finding Dory in the afternoon at a mall between Seattle and SeaTac. We walked the kids around the mall for a bit, went to the Lego store, and checked out, and turned away from, the horribly crowded indoor play place. I don't especially love indoor malls. If I'm gonna go to a mall, I prefer open air malls much much more.

Minecraft Legos. and Star Wars. Oh boy, we've got birthdays coming up this month!

Unfortunately the sun was starting to come out of the wet clouds right as we went to the airport.

Going to try and sleep again and hopefully I won't be writing more for several more hours. . . . . . . . . . . .

It is still Wednesday, 07/06/16, but now 9:38am

I've been up for 2 hours already, got in a grocery run and fed breakfast to one child. Still need to get the other child fed and breakfast made for Nasser and me. Nasser should be at work, although he's started looking at emails and he's on a work call at the moment. 

Today is going to be busy, but a different busy than we've had the last 8 days or so. I've got laundry to run, some house straightening up to do, and potentially some prep packing for camping this weekend. YIKES, camping this weekend. It sounds so hard to be moving on to the next summer plans already!

And somehow another two hours, with some blog editing of all the above, and adding pictures, went by. I feel more relaxed, I'm blogging. Nasser is at work, we are all still decently full from the later breakfasts, and the boys are, ahem, playing some Minecraft on the Xbox. Although they've been playing Minecraft on their kids Kindles (because it was vacation and they did get some amount of that when we were just hanging out at the houses) but it's been 1.5 weeks ish since they got any Xbox time and a solid week without it before that. They've had a lot of travel over the last 2.5 weeks, they've been good travelers all in all, but it feels nice to be taking some relaxing and rejuvenating time too. And yeah, video games can be a little rejuvenating for my boys. They often are for Nasser as well, and they can be for me.

It feels so good to blog. I've been too much without it these last couple weeks.

Buddy the cat really missed us while we were on vacation. He didn't do too well while we slept in the wee hours of the morning, lots of scratching at the door and waking us up because he wanted to play. He's being a sweetheart right now, curled up behind me while I type on the bed.

I'm glad we did the trip, it was mostly all good, other than points when the kids got grumpy and tired, or points where Nasser or I got grumpy and tired. Luckily those low points didn't much coincide with the kids' low points. Although I suppose there were times where we all got grumpy, tired, and hungry in the car, all at the same time. There were a few points where I'd say I was depressed, but mostly I was able to recovery to an almost back to normal or perhaps back to normal. Sometimes it took awhile to get there while I silently cried in the car or while talking and breathing with Nasser in our bedroom. I think my family may have noticed a few moments maybe my eyes showed it, or maybe someone came across my tissues on the bed.

Sometimes I need to let go into those moments when I'm alone or just with my little family, to allow for those feelings to get out, or blog about it, in order to let those feelings go. I feel like I hold those feelings in so desperately sometimes, those thoughts that trigger my depression. I need to let them go or speak them aloud to Nasser and cry about it, or blog about it, and I can release them. Talking about my depression and my low moments sometimes, and somehow, gives the strong me power. Power over my depression. To keep it from controlling me.

I've been meaning to take time to think about who I am. And what I'm about. It's a thing from therapy that's been my homework for some time and I haven't figured out quite what to say. Well let's give it a go now.

I am strong. I am warrior. I am badass.

I am friend. I am woman.

I am runner/swimmer/cyclist/skier/hiker/triathlete.

I am citizen. I am human.

I am mother. I am wife. I am daughter and daughter-in-law. I am sister and sister-in-law. I am aunt. I am cousin, I am niece, I am granddaughter and granddaughter-in-law. I am friend.

I am lots of things to many different people. I am acquaintance, I am blog writer, I am facebook friend.

I am a patient. I am a mental illness patient.

I am open, I am honest, I am truthful. I am sensitive. I am full of love.

If you've read until the end, thank you. Thank you, dear dear readers for allowing me to be honest.