Was a busy house keeping morning, managing the gutter cleaning and cooking for Josh and tidying up some messes I'd let get away from me, but very productive and I'm now settled in at the cafe with a delicious latte from the incredibly gorgeous and also very sweet barista named Sulema(sp?), she often has spiky metal on her face or hair or clothing and a neat spiky septum piercing but a soft, gentle voice and a big warm smile, she's got a cute pink crop top today, I'm not used to seeing her in a bright color.
I actually feel good for the first time in I don't even know how long. I mean, I've had brief moments here and there of happiness or relief, esp. outdoors when I feel okay or like that moment communing with the earth in the desert in Red Rock Canyon, but this hit me on a bike ride last night and is still here a solid 18 hours later.
It's back to a soft drizzle and overcast skies today but yesterday it was sunny and hit 70. This often happens, where I'm depressed for a long spell late in winter and then it breaks with the first warm sunny day. And I feel embarrassed, as it appears I have the emotional complexity of a plant. Just put me in the sun for a bit and I'll be fine, I guess.
I almost pulled the trigger on getting a SAD lamp a couple weeks ago, still something worth considering. But I'm realizing all of these non-drug tools for depression just barely take the edge off. The really excellent therapist, vitamin D, the daily morning outdoor light (even cloudy) exposure, exercise, sobriety, being in nature, omega 3 supplements, estrogen, friendship/connection, anti-inflammatory foods, dancing, it all does about as much as an aspirin would do for a broken leg. It's not nothing, but I keep thinking if I find the magical combination, or if I consistently do *all* of it, every day, I'll figure this out and fix this chronically uncomfortable condition.
I am going to add in weekly group therapy (same therapist), and I will also incorporate creatine as that apparently might have some benefits. I'll keep trying. What else is there to do.
It was a little discouraging listening to a really interesting episode on Huberman about addiction, he was saying as the brain ages, it's harder to learn new things, including getting addicted to stuff - that is, it's really unusual for someone in their 50s or older to develop a new addiction. It's something that happens when the brain is more plastic.
But this also means that un-learning depression may keep getting more difficult as I age, which is a depressing (ha) thought. I have heard, though, that menopause is especially triggering and that many women experience a big improvement in mood when they complete this transition. Their mental health on average gets better. Here's hoping.
...
I wanted to write about my day, yesterday.
I got up with the sun yesterday and tried (failed) for a favorite lookout tower, fed Avalanche, had my morning light time with the birds, as the sun slowly came out. I have made a routine of brushing Avalanche outside every morning, she absolutely loves it and expects it, now.
I had to pivot when I checked my calendar because I thought I had yesterday off but no, I had a full day of sparkling scheduled. The rest of the week I set aside for taxes, but I did not set aside Monday, I forgot. But I was able to adjust easily and still cooked breakfast and lunch for Josh and myself and baked banana bread and got out the door in plenty of time for work.
I had a nice easy kind fun delightful batch of customers.
During my coffee break, the sun came out in earnest and it was sooooooooo warm, I sat outside and nibbled my snacks and basked in it.
My last customer and I are both the same age and commiserated over our menopause joys, and also were losing our minds over the beauty and warmth of the sunshine. It was fun. I gave her way too many sparkles and was happy to do so. She's going to a music festival at the Sphere in Vegas in a couple of weeks and wanted to be sparkly for it.
Considered going to the park where mom's memorial bench is after work to soak up the sun but that sounded too sad, so I came home instead to ship out a giant order I received that morning, the traffic wasn't too bad and Avalanche was soaking up the sun happily when I got back, Josh decided to show off his new very small battery powered lawn mower for me, he's so cute in his excitement over being able to care for our very small yard, it's sweet. He's allergic to grass so wears an N95 when he mows, pretty cute.
I got my order packaged up and dropped it off at the post office here locally, the Tigard post office is really great, stuff ships faster from here than it ever did when I was in Portland proper. The hours are better, too. Got some much-needed groceries after, and still had some sunshine left when I was done with my chores, so I decided to hop on my bike and try to get up to the water tower on the hill to the east of us before sunset.
This ride involves some pretty steep hills and is a little over 2 miles but has about 500' of elevation gain, maybe a little more depending on the route. So it's not a big ride but it's a really nice little workout.
Everyone was out walking their dogs, the light was beautiful, traffic was light, I took some cute photos at the water tower and the park just below it for Joshter.
Here is a shot of our star magnolia out front:
Arrival to the water tower:
Sunset:
Basking:
This route was something I found by walking, I just wanted to go for a walk one day and aimed uphill until I reached the park. (I found the water tower a bit higher up past the park on my bike later.)
Along this route, is a house with about 30 chickens in their yard. On a dry-erase board in their driveway reads, "farm fresh eggs, $5, in fridge" and there is an old fridge outside under an awning. Josh checked this fridge a month or two ago and found nothing, but it was mid-winter, so I brought a carton and some padding on my ride last night and skipped buying eggs at the grocery store in hopes the ladies may have started laying.
Success!
There were like 10 dozen eggs in there, so this might be our spring/summer egg supply going forward :)
This suburb has no limit on the number of chickens one can have. People have geese and goats and I have smelled signs of other farm animals around on this route. We are definitely not in the city anymore, lol.
...
I was soooooooooooooo happy the rest of the night. I changed my bed sheets and did laundry, ate a beautiful dinner, learned some really interesting things about tinnitis that is really helpful actually for dealing with it, and also hearing loss and protection in general, an interesting podcast on Alzheimer's, sent some messages to some people I care about.
I think part of my joy came from us going on a hike together in the sunshine on Sunday, we had to drive an hour and 40 minutes to get out of the clouds but we did find sun eventually, I took Josh to Columbia Hills state park and we admired the Lewis' woodpeckers and were serenaded by western meadowlarks. It's a little early for wildflowers so there was barely anyone out there, so we had a lovely lunch by ourselves on a boulder with a gorgeous view of the river and the mountain. Home made pizza and pumpkin pie (I baked it for pi day). Afterward we crossed the road to Horse Thief Butte and Josh got some bouldering in, my little monkey:
(he had the crash pad below him, and was climbing things he was fully capable of climbing. But still. eep!)
Horse Thief Butte is gorgeous, we had fun scrambling around and enjoying views of the Columbia Gorge, the weather turned and dropped a couple of tiny raindrops on us but nothing bothersome, it was a really pretty place to just hang out and watch Josh climb stuff. I encouraged him to do one that was a little spicy and he got a surge of adrenaline, I'm glad he pushed himself, I think it's really good for his well-being, it was nothing he couldn't handle but he had to work at it. It was fun to watch.
...
( small food-related rant )...
I worry about Josh a little bit. My sex-drive is still nonexistent and I thought I might have overheard him crying a little bit last night, after trying to test out whether I might be feeling sexy last night. He saw me all happy and glowing from the bike ride and got hopeful. But I still don't feel anything. And it's really not as easy as I would hope to just mess around with him in other ways even though I'm not feeling it. It's revolting and I wish that weren't the case. Poor thing. I wish I could fix it. I am trying. I went back to using creams and suppositories again to try to help. They don't always do anything, but if I don't use them I definitely have less of a chance of getting there. It's super frustrating, because not wanting sex also makes me not want to want it, somehow? My body doesn't want me to use the creams and stuff, it just wants me to let it be left alone and untouched. It's super difficult to force myself to try to "fix" it. When everything in my body just wants this part of my life to no longer exist. It's a hard experience to talk about or describe or explain. I don't miss sex or feeling sexy or feeling desire, but I am sad for my partner. I feel guilty and like I'm letting him down.
...
It's interesting to me that I have become so much more functional in the last two years - I blame therapy directly for this - I am better at keeping up with the house, I'm better with big scary financial things like BUYING A HOUSE omg, better at dealing with difficult family members and avoiding people who mean me harm, SO much better with the mild emotional hoarding issues (they're still there but so much more manageable), better at dealing with medial stuff to some extent (I do need to schedule a blood draw and my colonoscopy and have been delaying those for long enough), I'm doing my own taxes now, work is going well, friendships and relationships are solid. My therapist noted that I did a good job standing up for myself and holding a boundary in Vegas when I asked to try a different room when our first unit smelled so badly of cleaning chemicals, and didn't make a fuss even when Josh criticized me for not handling that situation better (yes I used some dramatic language about it making me sick, I may have verbalized the possibility of sleeping in the car, but my voice was never raised and I only asked to try and see if another room might be better, never that I would throw a fit if I didn't get what I wanted).
But I'm still so completely broken in other ways. I can't keep up with laundry, my room/office/closet bathroom in the house is still not set up and half in boxes and totally neglected and I continue to avoid dealing with it, I still can't brush my teeth or shower consistently or floss, or wash my face, I struggle to keep up with medications and supplements still (even though the last two days have been better, aside from forgetting my vitamin D and my estrogen yesterday, sigh), I am not great at keeping up with people socially face to face, though I am getting better at messaging, I still collapse into a puddle in waves of overwhelming grief regularly, my depression is soooooooooooooooooooooo bad I have to drag myself through most of my days - this is the first day that hasn't felt like that in forever - I'm addicted to saltines randomly (I am trying to detox from them this week), I have been crawling into bed and avoiding life by 8pm every night for weeks. (Last night was the first night in a very long time I was up until maybe 9:30pm.) So much of everyday function feels too hard for me to manage, even though I'm so much better than I was, in other ways. So frustrating and confusing.
...
I am still on the fence about whether home ownership was a good idea or not. I paid like $300 for gutter cleaning today, I will have to do that annually. There is a little bit of water seepage in the crawl space, I will have to mitigate that for mold annually. I am getting all kinds of pressure to replace the furnace. So many thousands of dollars of maintenance every year. People act like renting is throwing away money but I don't think people are factoring in the cost of maintenance when they pencil out ownership vs renting. This suuuuuuuuuuuuuuux lol.
I LOVE having a yard for Avalanche, though. Her quality of life has improved dramatically and she is exponentially happier, it's obvious. I enjoy not worrying about lead paint whenever another cupboard starts to chip. It's really nice having our own laundry that is not coin operated and actually gets our clothes clean. And the dishwasher is pretty magical.
There are downsides but I won't get into it too much. It's double the driving for me. I just am not sure it pencils out, but am trying really hard to focus on the good bits. We enjoy the westerly view from Josh's rooms, and I'm grateful for my new cat sitters.
...
I still need to decide what to do about air conditioning, but today is for taxes, time to get working on those.
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solarbird![2 screencaps. On left, Hannah Brandt on X, 4:51pm 22 March:BREAKING: In a phone call just minutes ago President Trump told me Democrats want to make a deal on DHS funding but he doesn't "think any deal should be made on this until they approve save America."First I asked him how long he's prepared to have ice agents help out at airportsHe told me, "For as long as it takes."Then I asked "Some lawmakers are saying they should just fund TSA while they negotiate on DHS. What do you think about that?"President Trump said "Now that I did this the Democrats want to make a deal. And I don't think any deal should be made on this until they approve SAVE America."On right:Shitstain on Shithole Social, Sunday 22 March:I don't think we should make any deal with the Crazy, Country Destroying, Radical Left Democrats unless, and until, they Vote with Republicans to pass "THE SAVE AMERICA ACT." It is far more important than anything else we are doing in the Senate, and that includes giving these same terrible people, the Dems (who are to blame for this mess!), a Five Billion Dollar cut in ICE funding, a deal which, even when disguised as something else, is unacceptable to me and the American people - UNLESS it includes their approval of Voter I.D., (with picture!), Citizenship to Vote, No Mail-In Voting (with exceptions), All Paper Ballots, [anti-trans hate propaganda], and [anti-trans hate propoganda]. Put it all together, and also, let Leader Thune clearly identify those few "Republicans" that are Voting against AMERICA. They will never be elected again! In other words, lump everything together as one, and VOTE!!! Kill the Filibuster, and stay in D.C. for Easter, if necessary. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! President DJT](https://solarbird.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/image-2-1024x783.png)
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