lucidlotuslife

Get over to Wordless Wednesday for many more fabulous photos.

You don’t have to make a lot of cheddar to give back to your fellow man.  Or to the animals.  Or the environment.  You don’t have to be a go getter and spend your days volunteering to help out (although it would be pretty rad if you did).  You can even be a major tightwad and still make a difference in this crazy, mixed up world.  Bookmark the permalink to this post and let your fingers be superheroes on a daily basis.  All free, all the time.  Not bad for a bit of goodwill towards men.

10.  The Hunger Site - The gold standard for click to donate sites.  Click on the yellow box and donate 1.1 cups of food are donated by the site’s sponsors, 100% of their advertising $ goes to feed the hungry.  They also have buttons at the top of the screen to click to donate for Breast Cancer Awareness, Child Health, Literacy, Rainforest and Animal Rescue.  Buying their fair trade, handcrafted wares helps too.  You can sign up to receive daily reminder emails with a link to click so not only is it free, it’s a no brainer.  Just don’t waste your time clicking over and over, they only count one click per person, per day.

9.  Free Rice - Give rice to people in need, get bigger brain cells.  Each correct answer in a vocab game (they also have other subjects to choose from including math, chemistry and geography) gets the huddles masses 10 grains of rice and you a increasingly difficult word.  Warning:  may be addictive and may induce feelings of omnipotence.

8.  Free Kibble - Answer a trivia question and, right or wrong, they will donate 10 pieces of kibble to animal shelters.

7.  Stand -  They are all about ending genocide.  If you can’t get behind this then you are probably a murderous dictator or fiendish despot or you have poor vocab skillz and don’t know the meaning of the word genocide.  It’s so a bunch of idealistic youth can win $500 of funding to their organization.  We need more idealistic youth because we will soon be in their hands.  Click it.

6.  Stop HIV - Click to um, to stop HIV.  And who wouldn’t want that?  Probably murderous dictators or fiendish despots.  Everyone else, get to clicking.

5.  Save the Rainforest- Who can resist the cute monkey faces?  Probably murderous..oh, you get the drift.  Kuh-lick!

4.  Stop Global Warming - So Al Gore probably didn’t invent the Internet, but he has got the right idea about where the planet is heading if we don’t make some big changes.  Reduce your carbon footprint and click away.

3.  Bhookh - Hunger is the #1 cause of death in India.  Click once daily to feed the kids.

2.  The Big Test - Sponsors donate 1 teaspoon of oral rehydration solution for each question answered correctly.  This saves millions of kids under 5 from the 2nd leading cause of death, diarrhea.  That just breaks me into bits.  To die from something so simple and so easily treatable.   Answer as many questions as you like.  Save some lives tonight.

1.   Give Vaccines - Each correct answer earns .01 milliliter of a life saving vaccine.  Do it.

Check out the other terrific Top Ten Tuesday lists hosted by the lovely Oh Amanda, you won’t regret it!

There is a party going on and you are invited.  Yes, you over there in the corner with your Lean Cuisine and your nose buried in the ipad.  Oh wait, that’s me.  But you’re invited too. 

It’s Mom Sexy Valentine’s Day Bash to be exact and is hosted by my most recent mommy bloggy crush girl, The Mommyologist.  She is rad and she will tell you why here.  And it’s all about loving yourself and not in the She Bop sort of way.  It’s about celebrating the awesome in Y-O-U and telling the world instead of waiting for someone to tell you.  If you have a blog, go write a blogsome post about what makes you awesome and then link up over at the bashso that everyone can be inspired by your chutzpah and positive self esteem will spread like wildfire across the interwebbys.  If you don’t have a blog go read it anyway and post a comment about the awesomeosity of yo bad self.   

While I love the concept and I love the love, I am not quite on the self lovin’ bandwagon as of late.  So I am going to bask in the warm glow emitting from my computer and delight in all of your words of self exaltation.  Get on over there and give yourself some props and let other women see it’s super cool to love all up on yourself.  Up to you.  No pressure.  You will probably singlehandedly release me from the evil clutches of depression if you do.  Just saying.

Happy VD, breezies!

There are a lotta links here, man.  And, let me tell you, there were a lotta more that I starred that didn’t make the cut.  I am going to have to revise my starring method perhaps.  Or delete the damned Neatorama.  But I would have missed out on The Big Legoski and Cat Eats With Hands.  I gotta believe it’s all worth it for that one clip alone.  What did you star this week?

Take Me Home Tonight Cast Reenacts Every ’80s Movie

Abducted

Sunday Brunch: Vegetarian Homemade Bagel Egg and Cheese Sandwich Recipe

The 10 Funniest Super Bowl Ads

You Men. And Suicide.

Thin Crust Pizza

Sweetie Pie Pops {Plus Hand Pies, Pie Jars, and Printables!}

Black Olive Pesto Dip – Deliciously Organic

it’s not you, it’s me

Why THEIR Methods Won’t Work For YOU

Strawberry Stuffed French Toast

how to be depressed. part 2.

Newsletter: Month Eighty-Four

Why Family Meals Make for Happier Kids

The Big LEGOwski

Cat Eats With Hands

Things I love Thursday.  Things I love.  Things.  Hmm.  I can tell you that depression and loving anything are not closely interrelated.  And I can tell you that I do feel this depression settling into my bones, or more accurately I feel it having had settled (sunk) in so slowly I didn’t realize it until it was here.  This is the place where every little thing sets my teeth on edge, where every mis-struck key is like the proverbial nails on a chalkboard.  Every busy signal, red light, unreturned email adds to the big ole dog-pile of steaming irrational irritation.

Soo, not the most sassiest of Susans today.  And pretty sure that this TILT (Things I Love Thursday) is supposed to be about accentuating the positive and E-liminating the negative which is the kind of hippie love groove that I typically dig on.  So in the spirit of kicking depression in the balls, here’s what I have to contribute on yet another frigid Southern day.

These are the yum.  They are the bomb.  Digity.  They make me smile with my guts.  Especially frozen.  4 points (old points) for 7 pieces and work every one.  They are only here til Valentine’s people, so get em while the gettings good.  Or something to that effect. 

Remember the joy of new comics on Wednesdays?  Probably not unless you are a super geek like me.  But I remember and even though it’s not Wednesday and these are not new, they’re yet unread by me and they make me smile with my heart.  The only way I could love them more is if I had a brand new Sandman, Powers, Alias, Transmetropolitan, Preacher to go along with my Buffy and Serenity. 

OK, TILT considered my mood officially lifted.  Go grab some more Things I Love Thursday awesomeness over at The Diaper Diaries, it could save your life.

Check out the rest of the awesome Wordless Wednesday photos, you will not regret it!

If this is a major funk that you’re feeling, if it’s more along the lines or the mean reds, if you are sad most of the time, if you can’t get out of bed, if you want to hurt yourself or others, if nothing sounds cool or fun then go here or call one of these numbers .  Call your dad or your bff or your priest or your mailman.  Just call someone.  Right now please.  Thank you.

If this is a mild funk or the winter blues, if you’re bummed because your team lost the big game then some of these might pop you right back into technicolor.  I needs more ideas y’all.  What makes the good times roll for you? 

10.  Read The Bloggess or Mommy Wants Vodka or Big Mama or A Softer World -

9.  Check out the Red Velvet Whoopie Pies at Tasty Kitchen.  - Salivate.  Bake and enjoy.  And send some my way.  But only two because, HELLO, I am on the Weight Watchers people!

8.  Watch Mama Mia! – If you haven’t seen this movie, you are probably a Commie.  If you choose not to see it now, you are clearly in line with the devil and have no capacity for joy or humanity.  Or possibly just do not enjoy musicals.  Either way, you’re dead to me.  JK.  Probably.

7.  Dance and sing along with Mama Mia! – You can’t resist the siren song of ABBA.  No one can.

6.  Blog about it – It helps, even if no one’s listening.  But don’t call peeps out because I’m fairly certain it will come back to chow down on yo ass if you do.

5.  Watch Ellen – There’s music and dancing and people dressed in blindfolds or silly costumes duking it out to win a trip to Cancun or a new ipad.  And there’s Ellen.  I big rainbow colored puffy heart Ellen.  She’s silly and funny without the mean or the snark.  And have you seen her smile?  Cuz, wowsa that can light up your day! 

4.  Prank call a friend -  Make it a good friend who won’t mind and who will be fully supportive of anything that helps improve your mental state.  And make it silly, the sillier the better.  Is your refrigerator running?  Prince Albert in a can?  Send money to help get a dashing young Nigerian prince out of a jam?  Help to acquire enough pseudoephedrine to start a small lab to produce methamphetamine for a group of displaced lab monkeys who got hooked during their trial?

3.  Listen to And Your Bird Can Sing by the Beatles or Could You Be Loved by Bob Marley or Mudhouse by Bob Schneider or Redneck Woman by Gretchen Wilson – Or whatever loud, silly, catchy, high on audio song that gets you jumping around on the bed with a hairbrush.

2.  Run – Run on a treadmill, run around the block, run with crazy arms like Phoebe from Friends.  Blood sailing through those veins, adrenaline shocking your system into a mood boost.  Warning, you may get hooked on the juice.

1.  Reach out and touch someone – Visit a friend.  Call, write, text, Skype, Facetime, IM, comment on mah blog.  Interact, man.  This crazy little thing called connection can help increase those synaptic links in yer brian.  People need people and not in a Soylent Green sort of way.

Check out the other terrific Top Ten Tuesday lists hosted by the lovely Oh Amanda, you won’t regret it!

The image at the top of this page was originally posted to Flickr by Jessica.Tam at http://flickr.com/photos/42305326@N05/4057782618

I do not want to write this post. I do not want to listen to my son’s endless chatter.  I do not even want to watch TV or read a book.  I do want to sleep.  For long periods of time.  I’m fairly certain this means I am somewhere on the depression trail again.  Haven’t been here for a long time, except for a brief postpartum dip. 

I really do not want to be putting it here where people I know occasionally check in and after reading these words may give me the sympathetic tilted head bob.  “How ARE you? ”  That’s the kind of thing that sets my teeth on edge and rankles me.  Don’t ask me how I am, don’t look at me like I’m pathetic.  Pretty sure we all have our own things and there’s something in you that could make me look and say the same to you.

I wrote a post after reading The Bloggess write about the stigma of mental illness.  She told us to open our big fat mouths and say what we’re feeling instead of filling up on our own bile.  That post introduced me to Lori, whose husband was quiet about his own mental illness and eventually killed himself in front of her.  Hereshe urges men not to be such hard assess and share their shit so they don’t implode.  At the same time, she is getting it all out on the pages of her blog and in my opinion is being a stellar mother and fing role model for anyone suffering grievous heartache and trauma. 

I’m not a man and I’m not suicidal.  I’m not even in the throes, but I’m also not just standing on the precipice.  I’m somewhere around having one foot over the guardrail slipping on the loose gravel.  I’ve been here a time or two before and I managed to kick it in the ass before it took up permanent residence.  And I think it’s because I said something to someone about it and made a point of trying like hell to kick all the sick and twist-eds out of my head when they cropped up.  You know – no one loves you, you’re alone, you’re a terrible mom, you’re less than.  Blah de freaking blah. 

Now I know I don’t have it as bad as so many people.  But it’s all relative, baby.  And I think that is a part of why people don’t talk out their shit.  I have a house and a husband and a kid and in theory some friends and I’m healthy and I have all my own limbs and a Master’s degree and more functioning brain cells than not.  For now anyway.  Who wants to hear me whine about my problems when there’s like no clean drinking water in India and there’s Darfur and Egypt is coming apart at the seams.  Plus, we’re almost to 2012 and you know it’s gonna get apocalyptic up in here.  But I feel sad, so feel sorry for me and let’s make it all about me, shall we?  I don’t think so.

But really y’all, platitudes became overused because we had to use them so many times.  So hear me when I say, everything is relative, baby.  You let one little sick and twisted fester in the outermost corner of your mind, when dark days come again it will still be there just waiting to start a party of self doubt and mental flagellation.  So fight the good fight .  I’m doing it for my kid.  He deserves a mom who can be silly and appreciate his crazy toddler antics and endure his meltdowns and hysterics with some modicum of serenity.  That mom is still in me.