2. You don’t *look* depressed.

3. There’s no reason for you to be depressed! Your life is great!

4. My Aunt Ida had depression and she said that all she had to do was tantric yoga every morning for three days while using a vitamin C suppository and she’s never had a problem since. Maybe you should try that.

5. Don’t take any prescription medications for depression. The drug companies are lying to you.

6. Don’t go unmedicated. Depression is a chemical imbalance and always needs to be treated right away with prescriptions.

7. Have you tried vegan/paleo/gluten-free/soy-free/fruitatarian to solve your depression?

8. Everyone has depression these days.

9. Oprah said…

10. JUST SMILE.

Shalini: Whole Foods, my wallet can’t handle you.

Allie: My wallet can’t handle it either. I don’t know why I stopped here. I think there was a ray that sucked my willpower away. Because I’m damn sure not going to an additional store. So $90 for butter is just the way it goes.

Shalini: Yeah, I know the feeling. Pick up an $18 cracker to go with the butter.

Allie: I should have brought you with me!

Shalini: No! Every time I shop there I end up spending almost exactly $200. I don’t know how.

Allie: But without you I might spend $175 and that is clearly not right.

Shalini: Clearly.

Allie: So is it irony that I just spent $154 at Whole Food but I’m having a Subway sandwich for dinner?

Shalini: Yes. Yes it is. I hope it’s something especially GMOd, like a meatball sub with a side of antibiotics.

Allie: I didn’t want to spend the $.25 for the side of antibiotics. What can I say? I’m a cheapskate.

Shalini: The flavor’s in the antibiotics!

Allie: “The flavor’s in the antibiotics!” really ought to be *somebody’s* slogan.

Shalini: We should email Monsanto!

Allie: Thanks to the NSA, they probably already know.

After?

This one, specifically:

It wasn’t so bad. I’m not posting where I get anything, but if you want to know, just email/message me. (This one: thrift store.)

Thing 2: I’m on a diet. Except I’m not calling it a diet. I’m calling it not having heavy creamer in my seven cups of coffee (shhh, coffee is therapeutic) and eating pie for lunch and Doritos for breakfast because I’m sad and I deserve Doritos for breakfast. No one deserves that, least of all my tummy rolls. So, not a diet so much as a return to sanity. Still, I’m limiting myself to three desserts a week (OH WOE SACRIFICE). I might grumble a bit because I’m a spoiled brat.

Thing 3: I am giving up on the Office Crush book. When I started the blog, and then when I wrote the novel for it, I was a different person than I am now. I think I’m a better writer (but that’s just my opinion) now, and whenever I go in to make edits on it, what I want to do is change it completely. Which doesn’t really work when people want an ending to what happened before. I struggled with this decision for a long time, but it’s time to move on.

But! If you want to read my last draft of it and find out what I thought would happen, I’m happy to email it to you. As I said, I’m a better writer now, so I…disavow all association with it? Nah, not that strong, but please don’t hold me to strict standards. It’s not in top shape, is what I’m saying.

Wow, I’m really a salesman! Well, with that, email me at readingandchickens at gmail if you want a very unwieldy Word doc of it.

UPDATE: Actually, if you want to read it, you can view it right here: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BzTId9mR-NS-OFNMSXdaeEN1Y3M/edit?usp=sharing.

My kids will not take a decent photograph anymore, so the “last” day photos are from May 2013.

Oh, wait, there’s this gem from last night:

That’s what a newly-minted tiny third grader and giant kindergartner look like. Also, why they will not have any photos when they’re older of this time in their lives. (But I’m glad their lice haircuts are growing in.)

The dog didn’t come to lick the tiny plates. The dog was asleep, snoring. The dog had epilepsy and arthritis and lupus. If the dog were a person, the dog would be a financial strain on taxpayers paying for Medicare.

I folded the laundry and I applied for a job. I tweaked my resume. I mowed the lawn and I cleaned the chicken coop. I thawed some meat for dinner and chopped some vegetables. I read part of a pretentious novel that was, despite itself, really well-written.

I walked to my laptop and opened the Word document that contained a draft of my unpretentious novel, 101,981 words, 351 pages. I looked at a few paragraphs and deleted them. 101,345 words. 350 pages. I looked it over again. I pressed “select all,” and then I held down the delete key.

I thought about one of my first nights in Seattle, when I’d made dinner for me and Gregg for the first time. It was something pathetic, ramen and salad, but it was more than I’d ever done before at 21, almost completely alone in a new city.  I ate my dinner, and then I ate Gregg’s, with nothing left to do. He came home two hours late, with a story. “You’ll never guess who I met!” he said with a huge smile on his face. “We were chatting in a half-circle and then who walks up but Steve Ba–”

“I don’t care! I don’t care!” I cried and stormed into the bedroom, forever ruining a perfectly good tale with my tantrum. I wasn’t almost completely alone in a new city.

I sat at my blank Word document that used to be a novel and thought about what I’d really like to do with my life. “I’d really like to bake bread,” I said to no one. The boys were at school for another hour; Gregg was at work; the dog was epileptic and arthritic and old and asleep. I cleaned the bathrooms.

“What about writing?” I asked myself again. “What about librarianship?” I clicked my empty inbox. No new line edits. No interview requests.

I went to the kitchen and baked a loaf of bread. I checked my email. Still empty. I took a walk and watched the other stay-at-home moms running and gardening and enjoying each other’s company with their freckled, muscled shoulders and lean bodies. I wondered what was wrong with me as I flipped a page of my pretentious novel and walked on, knowing that I didn’t want to be them and that everything I ever wanted was in 2D, flat on the page, in my hands.

I walked back home, unlocked the door, and sat in the swivel chair at the desk. I put down my pretentious novel near my abandoned coffee mug and another tiny plate. I reserved some books at the library website, and then I opened a new Word document only to look up at a clock and realize it was noon, time to pick up the preschooler.

I closed the document. “Do you want to save changes?” the program asked me. I clicked, “No.”

I answered in my vlog (vlog!), but it took me six minutes and it was just me talking and…boring. I don’t know anything about video, but that can’t be interesting. So, how do I read so much?

First, I don’t read nearly as much as, say, Janssen or Elizabeth. They make me look quite slow.

Second, the actual answer is super boring. It’s that I don’t have a lot of other hobbies. I don’t like to go out with friends too much. I am not a big talker. I like to bake, but there’s only so much baking I can do without making myself sick. I don’t like much television–I can’t take dramas or anything where anyone is in danger of any kind without feeling high amounts of anxiety (Gregg is the same way, and so are my kids), so that pretty much leaves documentaries (snoooooze) or shows like Community, which constantly get cancelled or turn terrible when Dan Harmon gets fired.

So. I read.

The more complex answer is: reading is a muscle. The more you read, the faster you get, and the easier your brain processes the information. This is not to say that slow readers are dumb. This is to say that it’s like running, or weight-lifting, or anything else. You wouldn’t expect someone who had been running every single day to be in the same shape as someone who only ran twice a week, no matter what. The more you run, the easier it is for your body to run (well, unless you injure yourself), and the more you want to run. Reading is the same way. I always have a book with me. (This is one of the reasons I love e-readers–then I can have MULTIPLE books in one purse.)

The first year I started reading for fun (I was not a reader growing up–I was a TV and movie lover) was in 2002, I think. I read 30 books and felt like a GENIUS. 30! The next year I read a few more, and the year after, a few more. I can’t remember what I read last year, but it hovered around 100. I think I’ll make it past that mark by September or October this year.

I say all of this with a caveat: I do not think reading is a morally superior pastime. Sometimes it’s really not a very good one (like when I’m reading many, many trashy things). I don’t think it’s better than movies or TV or talking on the phone or hanging out with friends. It’s simply better for me. Reading and writing have saved me, but that doesn’t mean they are good for everyone. Just like I’d really like to high-five Jesus, but I can see how you might not want to. (I do not have an evangelizing bone in my body. SORRY JESUS.) Jesus isn’t for everyone. Books aren’t for everyone. Blogs aren’t for everyone. It turns out people are individuals, and we have to find the right things for ourselves.

It’s just that I can connect with words on a page better than I can connect when people are talking, and I just feel better when I watch less TV. My anxiety is at a low simmer when I don’t have to worry about those victims on CSI: Indianapolis, or wherever. AND there are a bunch of books I cannot POSSIBLY delve into (mystery, Stieg Larrrrsssssonnn books, Tana French, anything where a child goes missing or is murdered as a key plot point).

***

So, a very large part of the Internet gave me many gifts, and I feel overwhelmed by love, and totally undeserving. It is not the gifts, because your emails and DMs and comments also make me feel undeserving. Your kindness and understanding and heartfelt LIKE of me makes me feel undeserving.

And I realized that I simply CANNOT deserve you people. There is no way. I am going to try my best to be a good person, and I think that’s all I can do, or be. I need to listen to the overwhelmingly large portion of humanity that is good, always, and see the smaller, less wonderful parts as just that: small. It’s easier to overcome darkness and hate when love and light are much bigger.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.