Better Than Prozac

Ugh, what an awful day. It’s cold and windy and wet now and I am constantly putting on more sweaters and jackets and socks. I got a scarf and hat at Glassons over the weekend that I really hate but I had to buy them there since I had a gift card and couldn’t justify the nice stripey Icebreaker hat I wanted. Work is going reeeeaaaaaaaallllllyyyy sllllllloooooowwwly and it’s dark when I get up and it’s dark when I walk home and I’m not afraid, exactly, to walk home in the dark but I always walk pretty quickly and try to be really aware of my surroundings and I just find that a little depressing on a sociopolitical level. I have a little bit of a sniffle and I despise my stupid fluffy hair that will not obey my injunctions to bend to my will, no matter how much product I haphazardly apply. I had to rip out all the work I did on my coin bra including each painstakingly-sewn-on little coin, and start all the way the hell over last night. Our garbage disposal is broken and I’m afraid the rest of the appliances are going to take it as a sign to mutiny one by one, as they’ve done before. Some new friends of mine broke up and it’s all sad and awkward with them now. I am going to Queenstown (in time for the Winter Festival) next Friday and it just seems like Friday is never going to come, no matter what I do to make the days go by quicker. This time next month I’ll be getting ready to go to Australia but it doesn’t even seem worth thinking much about, it feels so far away. I hate everything I’m writing lately and I don’t know how to make it not suck.

It’s winter, and I’m itchy to do and go and be somewhere else. My year’s working holiday visa is almost up and I have spent most of it on the working part and not so much on the holiday, and now that it’s getting time to potentially go back to the States (fingers crossed, fingers crossed for a job and a visa and another year) I am regretting all the time I’ve spent in a windowless office. And I’ve just been feeling low today, I guess—lonely and shivery and self-critical, wondering why I can’t seem to do anything right and why I don’t measure up to the accomplishments of any of my awesome cool friends. I wouldn’t say I’m homesick, exactly, but I’ve really been feeling the lack of email lately and wondering why my inbox is always empty. I hate that little You Have (0) Unread Messages thing…like, thanks a lot, Yahoo Mail, why don’t you just say that (0) People Love You, Loser. I found myself thinking tonight as I fought the wind up the hill on the way home, “I could really use, like, a full-body hug from someone fantastic right now.”

But as usual with me, I’m happy to say, things aren’t really so bad. I made my favorite Condiment Pasta tonight, which you make by boiling up some pasta and throwing in heaping spoonsful of sundried tomato pesto and olice tapenade along with several big crumbled chunks of feta cheese (New Zealand dairy products, my heart is yours forever), and which, for maximum effect, must be eaten with an oversized spoon with the bowl close to your chin as you watch the animal channel and feel sloppily sorry for yourself even as you realize that it could be worse: at least you are not currently wrestling a giant python, and giant pythons are pretty cool. And of course the reason I’m making (and re-making) a coin bra is because I’m (probably) performing in a bellydance hafla the day after I get back from the South Island and the other day when Sylvia and I were marking out our duet we couldn’t stop chortling about how fun and hot it was going to be—I believe the words “We’re going to have to put a note in the program that there should be an intermission after we go on just so people can make out” were uttered, and you know that’s a good sign. If next Friday ever does come I will have a very fun ten days ahead of me, and then of course there are wallabies and coral reefs and rainforests to look forward to across the ditch, not to mention gorgeous friends in Melbourne and the temporary resumption of the backpacker lifestyle which should be hilarious if nothing else.

In addition, tonight at class we did drills to Justin Timberlake and I just immediately felt better—clear evidence that carbs and hip slides are just as good, if not better, for a mild case of the winter funk than Prozac or whatever. Seems like I should file that information away for future reference, right?