This guy (who is very fat) is basically “my man” for meds.

This seems to be a trend.  I swear I’ve had, like, five psychopharmacologists who were fat.

The one I have now, on the other hand, I want to hit in the face with a Big Mac.

2x150mg of Wellbutrin XL (aminoketone class anti-depressant)

Helps you quit smoking too!

/I’ll shut up now

My last one was a skinny gay man. But I think his boyfriend in the closet (he literally worked in the closet that adjoined the office) was fat. I didn’t get a good look at him, just a glimpse, once.

My new druggist is a lady. I haven’t met her yet, I called Monday for an appt and her secretary promised to call back. Which she did, fourteen times, but only to ask info about my insurance.

As for the shrink, when I first spoke to her, she offered to come to my house that day. Which I thought was odd. “I’m just having anxiety attacks. I’m not about to throw myself in front of a truck or anything.” “Good, but if you do get that feeling over the next day or so, go to the emergency room.” Which seems like odd advice, really. I’m not thinking about throwing myself in front of a truck, but if I was, wouldn’t I do it on the way to the emergency room?

is like a new employee at a company: for the first few weeks they scramble around, not knowing what to do

Of course you never learn till they’ve passed the probationary period that they scream and spit at their monitor. Or that they have christmassy ring tones. not that this is gonna happen in your head dimmer. we’ll keep an eye out.

the atrium outside my window is all glass steel and terrazzo, and today a man came through there barefoot and barking. I know there was a terrible sad story there, but I could sure understand the impulse. the room begs for barking.

My favourite is the picture of Adobe World Headquarters.  Impressive!

That’s your adobe dollars at work! Buildings like that don’t come cheap, kids. $2,000 for software please.

I really enjoy the big beautiful skies, even the ominous-looking one at the end. Sky is just not something I see a lot of.

Try licking the end of a 9 volt battery.
That might clear your head.

Try licking the end of a 9 volt battery.

So does a 250 volt capacitor.

Does it make me a bad person that, when I’m in the waiting room at my psychopharm’s office, I always look around the room to make sure I’m the least crazy-looking person there?  I mean, god, you’re already crazy if you’re in a shrink’s office, no need to compound the offense with mismatched sweats and Tevas with socks.

How the hell does one go about getting a shrink nowadays?  All the major hospitals around here require you to have a PCP at their hospital before you can make an appointment with their psychiatric people.  How long does it take to get an appointment with a PCP?  4-6 months.  Either that, or they don’t take my fucking HMO.  Can I pay out of pocket?  No.  So, basically, unless you try to kill yourself and end up in the ER, you’re fucked.  If you’re functional enough not to need the ER, then clearly you can wait 4-6 months.  At which point they will have forgotten your name/number and you have to start all over again.

God I love our health care system.

No, that makes you normal… err… if I count as normal that is.

BTW, never try to turn your AA confession into a stand-up item. They do not get the funny.

God I love our health care system.

Yeah, it sucks ass, for sure.  Don’t suppose you could switch to a PPO plan…

BTW, never try to turn your AA confession into a stand-up item. They do not get the funny.

Eh, their loss.

Duchess, I dunno but now I’ve got an appt tomorrow a.m. My last shrink took about 45 days for an appt, so that’s not atypical. But this lady offered to come to my house, which means she’s verifiably nuts, clearly.

Goddamn, Dimmer; nice wheels.

"BTW, never try to turn your AA confession into a stand-up item. They do not get the funny."

“You’re using your humor as a barrier.  It’s your defense mechanism!” Blech.

No, assholes, this is how my fucking brain works!

(Alanon’s the same but even more humorless.  When your stepdad takes a well-past-drunken swing at the neighbor, misses by a mile, falls backwards somefuckinghow and cracks his head open and goes to the emergency room?  Don’t laugh when you tell that story.  Trust me.)

Just hug your pillows tight.

You know what FIAT stand for, right?

Found On Road Dead!

Ha ha!
How do you oil a Fiat? Drive over an Italian.
(It’s funny because it’s true!)

My eldest sister’s first car was a Fiat.  I thought she was pretty cool.  Even if it was diarrhea yellow.

My sister-in-law had a fiat. ANd yeah, it broke down on the road. My brother’s a mechanic, and was pissed as hell when she bought it. But for awhile it was cute, anyway. Until she had to walk a dozen miles home. Really, she needed the exercise.

I went to alanon meetings (mandatory) in high school. The nuns required that I skip half of every lunch hour to go to this stupid meeting. They promised me that “nobody would find out,” but that seemed ridiculous: how else do I explain to friends that I am leaving the cafeteria at the same time as everybody else who has alcoholics and addicts in the family? And if “nobody needs to know,” how did YOU know that my brother’s an addict?

Anyway, so they kept wanting me to share more traumatic stories. This would be right after the girl who’s drunk dad raped her than dragged her down to the basement and tied her up for three days while he whipped her mama or something. “Um, well I guess he seemed kind of high. He came home, slept on the sofa for three hours, then he left again.” “And did he hit you?” “No.” “Well how does this make you feel?” “I’ve got four other siblings, I don’t need all of them.” “Tell us how you feel.” “I wish he would stop using my hairbrush.”

That cracked me up, LP.

Daddy’s not an alcoholic, he’s a drunk!  Alcoholics go to meetings…

I think everyone at my high school was in some form of therapy or the other.  I liked mine.  Sometimes she’d let you smoke in her office, which is always awesome if you’re 16.

Speakin’ of alcoholics, a couple of days ago a few people were milling around the kitchen, getting coffee, toasting bagels, etc.  This one girl goes, “I love coffee.”

I said, “Me too, I’d be comatose if it weren’t for this [points to giant travel mug of caffienated goodness].”

“Oh, I don’t care about caffiene, there’s just something about holding a warm cup of coffee in your hands that’s so comforting, like you get this feeling of calm, that everything is going to be okay.”

“Yeah, that’s how I feel about gin.”

Silence.  Crickets chirping.  Someone on the 21st floor coughing.  I grabbed my oatmeal and went back to my desk.

Now everyone thinks I’m an alcoholic.  Lurvly.  As long as they don’t make me see the company shrink.

Now I wish I’d said, Well, it’s not like I’m drunk right now.  But then everyone would think I was protesting too much, and that I was drunk.  And then I’d think I was drunk too.  In grad school, there were points when I drank so often that sometimes I couldn’t remember if I’d been drinking and was drunk or not.  Hmm.  That sounds rather pathological when I write it down.

Eh, fuck those too-normal bastards.

Yeah, I’m not too worried about it.  I’m sure there’s plenty of folks aruond here who actively drink on the job…

That’s hilarious, MD.

Just came back from the shrink. In the waiting room, I am given about seventeen sheets of questionnaires. Its my entire biography. Questions include, “Who do you think is most responsible for your current mental state? A. Mother. B. Father. C. Both.” I skip it and write “about average.”

Every square inch of her office is festooned with little nostalgic sweet french lacy baroque cutesy crap. French-carnival figurines, little signs that say cutesy shit, lace doilies, gargoyles on the furniture--what’s up with shrinks and gargoyles? They seem to really like them. Considering that their patients feel possessed by demons, I’m not sure gargoyles are the best decorating choice.

Anyway.

So the light is broken, and we have to meet in the dark. she keeps the door open to the waiting room so that she can see me. She’s got a little black poodle who i call to, but he doesn’t come over. Midway through, the repair guy comes in and fixes the light. Then we resume, blah blah blah. She’s all hearts and flowers. Totally different from the last one.

Towards the end of our meeting, her dog comes towards me. I’m kind of happy about this, I like all animals. But when I pet it, it bites me. Then it keeps jumping at me, nipping my fingers. There’s no way I’m going to be able to pet this thing. She says, “Oh, he likes you! Wow, he doesn’t usually like people!” He continues to try to bite me. She says, “That’s a great sign. When people are really sick, he has a hard time with them. He gets scared and aggressive.” Just then, seeing as we’re done, I stand up. The dog starts barking and straight up charges me, bites my ankle, growls. 

“Good thing I’m well then!”

Not. Awkward. At all.

Great. Now I look like the psycho one. Christ, where’s Moon when I need him? As long as he was here, we always knew who took the extra-special pills. (I kid, I kid.)

Who do you think is most responsible for your current mental state?

D) the video for Michael Jackson’s Thriller

No, Lady P, your shrink is clearly in need of help—which is quite common in that profession. It like they don’t let you counsel unless you are thoroughly screwed up, yourself.

I saw a shrink for a while back when I was with the sociopath who tried to hit me (tried, because he was too drunk to LAND a punch)... I really liked the guy (the shrink, that is, not the sociopath). About all I can recall him telling me, though, is, “You have good instincts. Try listening to them more often.”

The Fiat is mine. Mine, mine, mine! It’s 31 years old, has just over 125K miles on it, and runs pretty darn well. Except that I need to get the vaccuum cylinder replaced. I used to have terrible trouble with the cooling system until we pulled out the part that keps freezing closed. Now that runs fine. I got the engine rebuilt just a couple years ago. She’ll be good for another 125K miles now. Except she has no heater and one of the wiring runs is shorted or grounded somewhere.

My mechanic is Hungarian.

My folks bought the car new. Gave her the name “Nanette”... I never call her that.

When people ask me to describe the car, I say, “It’s a shade of blue that no larger car could possibly pull off.”

Thanks, Moira. Actually, I really like her, but I was thinking exactly what you said while I waited in the room. Why are they all nuts? Because they are. They so totally are.