I just read your thread about your daughter and I hope you all can pull through okay.

I'm doing good. I just got in from just about finishing up my Christmas shopping. I still have to buy one more thing for my wife and I'll be all done. I think I'll get that tomorrow. It's such a relief to get that all done.

Jen and I will celebrate here on Christmas day. Then on New Year's with family. It will be our first Christmas as a married couple. This time last year I was getting ready to move in with Jen. Time flies.

LOL

Bringing tidings of comfort and joy
Happy holidays everyone

Fighting depression, again.
First Christmas EVER without my daughter.
The house seems so cold and lonely and frankly, I'll
be glad when Christmas and all is OVER.

Taking care of myself by not feeling obligated to do ANYTHING at all.
I'm just not up to it this year.
And that's okay.
Going to bake a little tonight and that is ALL.
I'm not going anywhere right now because I can't take the stress on the streets...
Not answering the phone, unless it is a family member calling.
I just need a lot of space to be alone right now.
Thank you DUer friends for being here tonight.
BHN

or do whatever you need to do. wish you were near, i would make you help me eat all these cookies!

Actually heard from both of my daughters today, a rather unusual confluence of events! 'Celebrating' by going to Starbucks with my best friend, in a bit; nothing more. Hope there's something decent on TV tonight.

But I'm feeling better now.

Between hard times and dna, this family is a mess, and I've pretty much cloistered myself so nothing much gets through but reruns of The Waltons and a few cooking shows. This week is very slow and that's fine. The animals don't know about all the drama so, I'm sticking with them.

was also a family wedding. This also went well overall, but I didn't sleep well (or at all) for a couple of nights. Bad for a bipolar. And I had one of my paranoid anxiety freak-outs because we had to stay in a motel, and motels can have bedbugs, and if you bring bedbugs home it costs thousands of dollars to get rid of them and replace all your things, and sometimes they come back if the exterminators don't do the job right, and..... and ... and...

And I'm sure you get my drift. My family was patient with me, although they laughed a bit, like they often do when I go over the edge like that. Hubby helped me tear the room apart looking for signs of infestation. We didn't see anything, but there's still a lingering fear that maybe we missed something and still brought them home with us.

God, I'm tired. I'm tired of being me. I'm tired of freaking out. I'm tired of being a micro-manager and driving everyone else crazy. I'm tired of worrying about my younger son and his likelihood of turning out bp too. I'm just so damned tired.

the foundation of mood. i look back at the times i fell into depressions, and there is almost always a link to getting enough sleep. i was 50 before i figured out that i need an average of 11 hours. it is hard to manage, especially when you have no idea.

get something to help on those hard to sleep nights. an ambien here and there helps me so much.