depression

I don't get depressed very often; not, that is, since I moved away from Seattle and Rochester, both places where depression wasn't so much a state of mind as it was a state of environment, a fillet of lunch meat sandwiched in between the mayonnaise of Seasonal Affective Disorder and the mustard of Precipitation Induced Suicidality.

In the Bay Area -- or at least, those parts of the bay area that aren't named San Francisco -- winter comes to find the sun still clocking his regular hours. The sky is still clear and blue. The trees change color, true, but this of a Prada-esque nod to fall fashion colors rather than the morbid, "just to make sure I fit in my coffin" dessication displayed by New York trees. (In Seattle there was little color change at all. Evergreens, like social conservatives, are aggressively certain that they are outside the evolution of changing times.)

There is, in other words, no excuse for Seasonal Affective Disorder. And yet, there I am, wallowing in the mud pit of negativity. All last week I slogged about in alternating states of depression and rage, trailing doom and gloom behind me like a Democrat hearing of Ralph Nader's candidacy in 2004. On Friday I came within a hair's breadth of going postal on one of the Purple Monkey Princes. I controlled myself, true, but I ended up cleaning out my office to appease my feelings.

I managed not to quit, mostly by thinking about wedding-related bills. However, I am looking for a new job, in case anybody's interested in a Purple Monkey keeper.

The Guy dragged me out to dinner last Tuesday, a reaction to the depressed phone message I left on his machine at work and the increasingly apathetic approach I had been taking lately to cooking. Our destination was Max's Opera Cafe, which in other locations actually presents opera with the meal. In our local opera cafe, the diva-ish promise of the name is fulfilled by operatic quantities of food. We were talking about possible books I could give my ex-roommate at our next book club meeting when we got out of the car. Our book club celebrates key events in our members' lives -- babies, weddings -- with a book-club-ish "shower" during which we present gifts of, you guessed it, Books.

"I was thinking the Kama Sutra," I said as we plodded through puddles. It does rain from time to time, even in Silicon Valley.

"It'd be wasted on her," the Guy opined. "She's too good looking. Maybe her fiance could use it, though." He opened the door for me. There was a small gathering waiting for tables just inside the lobby. We herded ourselves inside with them.

"Too good-looking? What the hell does that mean, 'too good-looking'?"

"I've just noticed that people who are really good-looking don't bother to try hard with sex. -- Two, please," he added when the hostess inquired. We followed her into the dining room while he continued to expound The Guy's Theory of Sexual Relations. "It's like they think they've already gone to the trouble to show up, so you should do all the work since you have more to make up for in looks."

"That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard."

"It's true, though."

We reached our seats. The hostess handed us menus and left, struggling hard not to giggle.

"It's still stupid," I said self-righteously, then glanced over the top of my menu to find that the Guy's shoe had unexpectedly joined us at the table. He was waving it at me.

I got my ex-roommate The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook to Parenting instead. It's never too early to heap on the pressure.

My sister is finally back from South America. She is thin, she is trim, she is gloriously tan, and she is terrifically cheerful. She is also sporting newly fixed teeth, which she modeled for me in the bathroom mirror.

"Eee ack 'ere?" she yawned, shoveling a fingertip into her mouth to beat a staccato on her molars. "Aaah 'icksd."

Which proves, if nothing else, that my sister always lands on her feet, even when it's in a dentist's chair in El Salvador.

She came down on Sunday night with her boyfriend for dinner and a place to crash for one night. We welcomed her as we usually do, with a frantically cleaned apartment and better food than we normally bother with ourselves: pepper steaks and garlic fries. The apartment cleaning is so she'll be fooled into thinking we're organized, sanitary people. The posh dinner -- they were good fries, dammit -- is so she'll think we're living well. In a sense, I think we're trying to convince her that we, as normal people, are living a life she would do well to emulate.

So far it hasn't worked very well. She tells me that after joining us for a week in Seattle, she'll be spending the next month ice-climbing in Montana, before flying to Spain to hang out with one of her best friends for a while.

"Want to come?"

Yes. Oh, yes. Please.

So, yes. I'm a little depressed. However, I'm headed up to Seattle for a week come Monday, so hopefully I'll feel better by then. Because if there's anything worse than depression, it's being depressed when my mother is within earshot.

Because my mother is captain of the Gratitude Police.

"You are no gratitude for good things in your life. You are so ungratitude children. Asa na yuu na, kotogoto issai tettei shite sushin ni kansha sen. Be absolutely grateful to almighty God in every way for all things morning to night. It says so, in prayer book. You should being more grateful, you have young, and I am so old, I am almost dead, but I am gratitude. Why do you not gratitude you are young and I am almost dead?"

Good question. I feel better already.