merry christmas!

ok, i'm not as bitter as i previously was, but i am happy the holidays are almost over. i will miss the days off of work, tho.

my thinking is that christmas should get less present-heavy as you get older. your tastes become more expensive, more honed, so it becomes harder to buy for the adult. i mean, it's easier to buy the latest twilight book than it is to buy the latest BMW.

but this christmas, my 34th on this planet, has been very, very excellent. i made a short list of things that i really wanted and i pretty much got it all... plus a lot more. do people think it's tacky to post the christmas booty list? well, too bad if you do. ;)

in no particular order:
coat from mom. one of those 3-in-1 coats from LLBean. in pink. :) i finally have something to wear when it's cold and raining.
slippers from parents-in-laws. they are pink (not unlike the coat) and they have lobsters on them. they match the flip-flops that i got for my birthday in 2007. :)
digital photo frame from my hubby. i love photos. i take many of them. thousands of them. sometimes i even get them printed and i frame them. so why did i never think about getting a digital photo frame? 'cause my husband thought of it for me! it holds 128MB of photos. and he already loaded some on there for me. i'm so taking it to work.
flesh-eating bacteria from scott. it's a giant microbe, silly. like he just carries around vials of strep pyogenes without telling me.
blazing saddles and young frankenstein on blu-ray from parents-in-laws. we opened the YF one last night and watched it right away. and i can't wait to watch blazing saddles tonight.
the simpsons on blu-ray from scott. also most excellent.
philosophy inner grace lotion and bath set from parents-in-law. scott's mom likes regular grace, which we bought when we went shopping before the wedding. i wasn't a big fan, but they got me the inner grace set, which smells really good.
$40 gift card for Joann from my sister. i can't wait to spend this on useless craft stuff!
sleep machine from the parents-in-laws. scott and i had been talking about getting one of these so we don't have to run the fan at night to prevent it from being so damn quiet in the apartment at night.
massage GC from my sister. this. totally. rules. i asked for this and certainly got it and then some.
drinking bird from my hubby. like the one in the simpsons episode.
1893 Exposition book from my sister. i already have it, which sucks, but it's such a great book.
cat locket necklace from my mom.
metropolis calendar from my sister.

so yeah. i got a lot of great stuff. maybe it all changes when you have kids, 'cause then people get crap for your kids instead of you. forget that!

the story of the iPod Touch

once upon a time, a girl really, really, really wanted an ipod touch. she was tired of coveting other people's, so she hoped that santa would buy her one for christmas. when santa said, "hell, no," she was very sad.

"well, i did get a bonus at work," the girl thought. "maybe i could buy one of my own."

so she looked. and looked. online, in stores, on the train. they were a bit expensive and the girl knew she should probably spend her money on more responsible things, like her 401k or her financial planner.

one day, she was buying some christmas presents on amazon.com when she decided to see how much the ipod touches were there. they were cheaper than at the apple store, although not by much. "should i do it?" asked the girl.

then the answer showed itself to her in the shape of a promotion from audible.com. it was $100 off an audible.com compatible device if you signed up for a year's subscription for $14.95. now, if you don't know this girl, she can be very patient sometimes, but when it comes to actually deciding to do something, she can be very impulsive. without reading too much of the fine print, but checking out the audible.com website, she signed up. she got her $100 off coupon and ordered her ipod touch.

finally.

the girl's husband was impressed. "wow, that's quite a deal," he said. he was considering buying a larger ipod for himself. after a few moments of looking at the promotion online, he asked, "how well did you read the fine print?"

"uh," the girl replied.

"you do realize that it's not $14.95 for the whole year, but it's $14.95 a month for a year's subscription. your $100 off coupon just cost you $180."

so she thought about buying another one to replace the one she'd have to return. but the price had gone up! and they were out of stock! now what???

the girl waited until the no-good ipod showed up. and waited. and waited. she went in to work on her day off in hopes that the package would show up. no dice. she asked one of her coworkers if she could be on the lookout for the package, since it also had some christmas gifts in it. her husband stopped by her work on the snowiest day of the year to pick up the unusually large box. she opened it and looked at the small, white package longingly, but knew that she shouldn't get attached, since she had to send it back.

the girl called amazon.com. "you have to return the device and then contact audible.com to cancel your subscription."

"but i don't want to return it! i've waited 6 months to own one of these beautiful pieces of electronic genius! can't you just return it over the phone and rebuy it right away without the promotion?"

"no, we have no way of doing that."

"sigh," said the girl.

so she tried one more time to see if they were in stock on amazon.com. the tides must have turned, because lo and behold, the ipod touch was in stock again! and it was the same price it had been when she ordered it the first time! she quickly ordered another one, repackaged the old ipod touch, and sent it back to amazon.com in the mail.

and she continues to wait. again. hopefully she'll get in time for her birthday.

and that is the story of the ipod touch. sigh.

depression

i have a friend who suffers from depression. it isn't all the time, but she has bouts where it's hard to even get out of bed and get dressed. some of you out there know what that's like. there are a lot of people who have depression. some are medicated and go through life fairly normally. some don't know they're depressed and live every day like it's normal to feel like giving up. some know they're depressed but refuse to get treatment because meds are for "sick" people.

if you encounter a depressed person in your life, here are some signs and tips:

1. a depressed person might not have the ability to think outside of him/herself. getting up and being upright is taking up all of their thought and mental prowess. if they have to work, that is also probably taking a lot out of them. don't be offended if they ignore you, don't smile, laugh at your jokes, disappear from social functions, don't return your calls or emails, forget birthdays. this won't happen all the time, but when an episode happens, don't take it personally when these symptoms occur.

2. don't disappear just because they do. i know when my friend is in a bad place because our weekly phone calls disappear, i don't get any IMs or emails. or if i do get emails, they are 2 or 3 sentences. i can't go very long without talking to her, so i'll just keep up my end of the conversation. i'll write her emails telling her what's up with work and stuff like that. i'll leave her voicemails at work or on her cell. i'll TM her every once and a while. it doesn't have to be every day, but a few times a week lets that person know that they are being thought of by someone and their disappearance from the scene doesn't mean that they've been forgotten.

we have a friend who does this. she is a counselor at a drug rehab facility. you'd think she'd know how to talk to someone suffering from depression, how important it is to know that someone on the outside cares about you despite the rough time you're going through, and the face that she's been friends with this girl for 18 years. but no. she said to our friend, "when you're ready to talk, i'll be here." that's not really the right thing to say. it's like a cop-out. i know that it might be difficult to talk to someone who absolutely abhors themselves and everything about the world, but a "hey, i'm thinking about you" always works.

3. for the love of god, please don't tell these people to "cheer up." they would if they could. there might be a difference between someone who loves to be negative all the time and complain about everything under the sun and a truly depressed person. a depressed person wants to enjoy life, wants the fog to lift. the negative person doesn't. there's a difference between depression and cynicism. depression is chemical. serotonin has taken a vacation and has left this person a shell of a human. everything they do is wrong, their decision making skills have left with the chemistry. if they do something wrong, they beat themselves up 10 times worse than you or i might. it's a battle every day to exist. cheering up isn't an option.

4. if they reach out to you, let them talk. don't feel the need to try to "fix" their problems. you don't have all the answers, so don't offer them up unless they ask you specifically. personally, i feel it's ok to ask about if they're getting treatment or how they're feeling. i'm going to assume you know these people pretty well if they're calling you in the midst of their episode. but you offer advice or try to get into their psyche when they don't ask for it, you are going to make them feel undermined, that they're doing the wrong thing if they don't take your advice. you aren't their shrink, so don't act like one.

5. be patient. if this person is a true friend, you'll hang around while they work themselves out. it might take a while to get the right therapist or medication. it may take a while to even know that they're depressed. but being on the sidelines, while sometimes frustrating, will help them in the end to know that they have someone that they can count on when things get really bad.

6. offer to do things. they might not take you up on it, but they'll know the option is there. offer to get in touch with people, to make appointments, to go to the store. depressed people have a hard time asking for help, so offering might let them know there are alternatives.

these are my opinions. i only have one friend who is depressed, so these judgments are based on our relationship. they may not work with everyone. my best advice is to ask what if there's anything you can do. and follow through on it. it's hard to sit back and watch someone you love suffer, but sometimes letting them know that you're there for them can do a world of good.

christmas stress

it's that time of year... when you have to run around like a ninny, trying to find the time and the money to get the perfect piece of crap for all of your friends and loved ones. you have to put yourself in their shoes and wonder, "what the hell would blow them out of the water? what will show that i've been paying attention for these last 11 months? what can i get that will be fabulous that won't push me into bankruptcy?"

i'm so tired of the holidays and it's only december 7. every year i say, "no. i'm not doing it. I'm not falling into that consumer bullshit trap of running out and buying useless crap." so then i try to make stuff. but that turns out to be more stressful than buying already-made crap. so then i run out and buy a bunch of useless crap. sigh.

what usually happens is that i panic at the last minute and buy too much. i don't keep track of the stuff i buy and i buy a million things for, say, my sister, for whom i can buy gifts that she'll love until the cows come home, or my dad, who doesn't need anything. so then, on christmas eve, i'll be wrapping gifts and realize i got 10 for my sister and 2 for my mom. unless those 2 are worth as much as the 10 for my sister, i feel like i'm jipping my mom.

and there's the problem. christmas isn't supposed to be about greed and how much money you spend. but then i ask myself, what the hell is christmas about? if you take the gifts out, what do non-christian people do for christmas? it's supposed to be about family, but when your family is either divorced or lives 1000 miles away, then what? you put up a crappy tree (or, in our case, no tree at all) and pretend you're a family? and since we're not having kids, this is as good as it's going to get. once the parents die and all of my other friends have kids to celebrated christmas with, we're going to be left sitting in our condo, watching law and order and eating take out indian food. i can't wait.

then there's the list. "what do you want for christmas?" doesn't that defeat the purpose? i want a million dollars. i want bush to be sent away for war crimes. i want a better, more rewarding job. the things i really want, someone can't give me. but i'm forced to renew my amazon wish list and come up with stuff that i might want. of course, it's like walking into a bookstore... i immediately forget what i want or might have wanted. and after christmas, i think, "damn, i should have asked for that!"

oh, well. i hate christmas.

yo

i'm sorry i've been so lax in posting lately, but i have an excuse.

i am hard-core addicted to Facebook.

i'm not talking "oh, i check it once a day." i'm talking "i have it open all day at work, reloading the page" addiction. it's an "i have so much f*cking work to do i don't even know where to start, oh, i'll look at facebook" addiction. i think of my day in third person smippets. "kim is freezing her ass off." "kim is bored with work." "kim is ready to kill the marketing department." "kim just took a shit." that kind of thing.

the down side to facebook is that you can't really "talk" about your day. and those little snippets just aren't enough. so i'm back. but nothing much is going on. stressing out over christmas gifts. it's gravediggers-butt cold outside. i have a million christmas parties to go to in the next three weeks. and if i hear "holly jolly christmas" one more time, someone's going down. hard.

what the crapping crap is this crap?

i woke up to this mess this morning. it's ice underneath the snow. i can't wait to a) chip off my car and b) shovel.

welcome to december.