Design envy

In my last post I started to elaborate on my lustful ways when it comes to home related collections.  Here are a few things I feel as though my hedonistic ways simply cannot do without.  Assuming I had the space in our lovely apartment, a husband who would allow me to bring these items into said space, and the money to purchase them in the first place.  

starting out big:

This is from Squint Unlimited.

Super rad.  I need it.  

Also, I want a kitchen that looks like this:

Maybe some splashes of color and a bit more kitsch, but you get the idea.  Light, clean, beach bungalow feeling... just relaxes me to think about cooking in such a great setting.  

A hutch that is super excellent.  it was so cheap on craigslist, but I am broke and we have no room for it.  It hurt to let it go though.

and then something mostly unrelated.  I think I want my hair to be this color.  thoughts?  the picture is sooo pretty.

And yes, I realise that none of these things really go together in a practical design way, but when you know what you like I suggest running with it.  

Fun Design/Home Decor

In the excessive spare time I seem to have these days I have stumbled upon a new and appropriately time consuming obsession:  Design blogs and websites.  It is like post-modern yuppie-porn or something.  I read all kinds of blogs and sites about home improvement, where to get the best deals on furniture I still can't afford even after the discount/sale price is taken into consideration, ways to "green" your apartment and lots of DIY's stories.  it is way sexy-time for me. 

So here are a few of my own projects!  

Table:

White primer

AND.... Painted, Stenciled, Lacquered: 

That seriously took like 20 minutes to upload the pictures, so I may not get as many posted as I had hoped.  There has got to be an easier way to do this...

One last close-up of my hand painted stencils.  that was hard work, bitches!

This is an egg. this is your brain on bi-polar

Mental health wise I have been doing okay lately.  Very bummed, but that is mostly due to being unemployed and feelings of general uselessness, and not so much the ridiculous lows of uncontrolled depression.  My anxiety has been way down too since starting and keeping up a herbal treatment that my sister has helped me figure out.  Panic attacks are super rare and that terrible listing over and over in my head of all the things I have yet to accomplish that happened at night when I hoped the whichever sleep aid I was trying would actually kick in has dropped dramatically.  So far, so good.  I even started to wonder "am I really bi-polar?  maybe I was just super stressed and tend toward the melancholic disposition... I mean when was the last really manic episode?"  

Of course, if I am writing about this then it happened, didn't it.  Yep last night around 12 or so my brain started racing.  And manic thoughts are not like normal racing thoughts.  They start, then get interrupted, then pick up again, layer and seem completely out of your control.  And I am convinced they go at 10 times the speed of sound because I only really catch like 10% of them by the end of the ordeal.  the inner monologue turns into a freaking round table discussion with a courtney love character apparently mediating.  Super fun.  and then there is this part of you that knows, this is just a chemical fireworks show in your brain.  Just ride it out and everything will be okay.  

There is a misconception about mania in the media I think.  That manic episodes are like the ultimate high and people in the midst of them are supremely happy about everything.  WRONG.  Just because you think you are not only the life of the party, but are the party itself and where ever you go, so must the party does not mean you are in the mood to party.  I am not sure that makes much sense to anyone who hasn't been there...  The point I want to make is, mania is terrifying.  Yeah, I may get really social sometimes and appear to be having the best time of my life, but really I am just holding on to the whirling dervish that is my brain.  

So after a few hours of an overactive brain and eyelids that refused to droop, I popped a couple ativan (though I am on pharmaceuticals I wish I didn't have to be.  that said, ativan is the best thing that has happened to me during all the medicine changes and tryout sessions.  more on that later though), went downstairs to lay on the couch (it was 80 plus degrees in the bedroom last night -uhg) and try very very hard to slow down the thoughts.  Being able to identify a manic episode while I am in the midst of it has been a process.  trying to encourage rational thought whilst your brain is ranting about letters to the editor of Vanity Fair it intends on writing and playing bob dylan's "masters of war" on repeat can be hard.  

Luckily, I drank plenty of ice tea, allowed EJ to do his intuitive kneading dance on my belly and eventually started hearing my real voice more than just random synapses firing at will.  by 4 or 5 I was able to drift to sleep and when I woke around 9 I felt back on an even keel.  Mostly.  

(synapse fireworks-seriously)

Moral of the story? Manic does not mean you are a shiny happy person.  more likely you are sweaty, terrified human who has no interest in breathing techniques or meditative, healing thoughts while in the throws.  But today leaves me in a state of semi-reprieve and I haven't crashed into deep depression.  These are all good things.  

Posting Delay Traumatic Stress Disorder

It the new PTSD!  

I kid.  However, I do have a post involving pictures of home improvements (super minor things, like keeping very small, easy to tend plants alive for a whole month and painting a table blue) that I have been meaning to get to.  and I can't find the cord that hooks up my computer to the digital camera, so for all my good intentions, not much has happened.  I realise that many of you hang on my every word (hardy-har-har) and so have been as excited about this hypothetical post as me.  Forgive the technical foul-up and rest assured that soon ("when will then, be NOW?" -Spaceballs!) I shall rectify this issue.  

In leu of my pictures I give you this small gift.  Look, its pretty!