Chars Life and Times

As I mentioned the other day, my depression was getting the best of me. I was depressed and terribly tired all day long. I don’t know how many times I fell asleep at my computer. I would wake up after having slept for about 8 or 9 hours, only to eat my breakfast and then be sleepy again. After about five more hours, I would finally be awake enough to get some work done. That would last for about eight hours and I’d go to bed again. 

I went to my doctor on Thursday and he really dosed me up. He raised my Welbutrin XL from 300 mg a day to 450 mg a day. He wanted to up it to 900 mg a day, but the pharmacist advised that that amount was too high and that 450 mg was the maximum allowed otherwise it could cause seizures and I sure don’t need that.

He also started me on a seven day trial of Provigil. I got a coupon from their website and was able to get the seven pills for free. He said that if it worked, I could call and get a full month prescription. It has definitely worked wonders. On Friday, I was able to get up, eat breakfast, take my pills and I stayed awake!!! That felt so good! I take half a pill when I get up and the other half about halfway through the day. It feels so good to not be dopey and sluggish all day. I love it! Also the medicine doesn’t make me anxious, nervous or anything.

I’ll let you know how it goes the rest of the week.  

I realize that is a strange title, but I wanted to talk about today in my life and also Roland Burris and the senate seat. 

Roland Burris was the man that our Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich appointed to President-Elect Barack Obama’s senate seat. Burris was turned away today when he appeared in Washington for the newly elected senate swearing in. All he could do was go back outside and visit with the vast amount of media waiting to talk to him. Since our secretary of state would not sign for him, technically his records were not in order for him to become our senator. Burris said that he will now confer with his attorneys to see what the next step is. So I guess we have to see what happens next with that.

With regards to my life, first of all I want to say that I did indeed order the electronic cigarette starter kit and also one for my husband. I don’t want to say where I ordered them from because I ended up going for a more reasonably priced E-cig and once I get it I will blog more about it and how it goes. 

My husband also found out last night that it might be awhile before he can go back to work. The last day he worked was the night before Christmas Eve. The plant where he works at was then going to be shut down for the holidays and they were told to come back to work on January 5. Hubby got a call the Thursday before from his employer and was told not to come back to work until January 12. Well of course that sucked since he would not be paid for that week. After hubby talked to a couple of friends he worked with, he found out that he might not get to go back to work even then. He also found out that some of his co-workers filed for unemployment, and he was told to do the same. He went down to the unemployment off this afternoon. So we will see what happens with that also. Darn recession!

I just found out about this fantastic invention by Njoy that is a smokeless electronic cigarette. I’ve been smoking for 30 years and smoke about 2-3 packs a day. My doctor would love for me to quit smoking. 
The above video shows a demonstration of the electronic cigarette that you can use in places that do not allow cigarette or cigar smoking. I am not promoting any product and I don’t make any money off of this! I just want to inform you that there is a product available that you can smoke in public places. It does not have any tar in it and it doesn’t “smoke”, it just gives off vapor. 

It supposedly helps the smoker to still get the satisfaction of holding a cigarette and inhaling, but it does not throw off second hand smoke. You still get the nicotine. Since my state of Illinois became smoke free over a year ago, I have mostly stopped going to restaurants and eating in because I’m not allowed to smoke there anymore. I do mostly carry out and drive-thrus and just bring the food home to eat. I like to have my cigarette between my salad and my main entrée and especially at the end of my meal. I detest having to get up and go outside to have my smoke. If these work, I might feel that I can go back to eating out in restaurants again. 

The starter pack is about $80.00 so I’ll have to save up the money to try this, but I sure am going to think about it. If you are interested in learning more about this electronic cigarette, click here. 

About two weeks ago, I was feeling really depressed. I was so bad that at times I just wanted to go to my room, shut the door and go to sleep-like all day long. I was tired all day long but couldn’t sleep most of the night. Some days I didn’t even know if I fed the dogs or not. Even my hubby was concerned about me and he pleaded with me to call my psychologist. 

Every year around Thanksgiving and Christmas, I have a hard time getting through the holidays. I know this and try to get by the best way I know how. This year, I evidently did not do a very good job. 
I talked to my psychologist and she made an appointment for me with the psychiatrist. I went to see him and told him what was going on, and he changed my daytime depression medicine and added to my night time medicine so I could sleep at night and feel better during the day. 

I’ve been on this medicine for about a week and a half and I’m afraid I’m going to have to call him back on Tuesday. I’m sleeping great at night, in fact too good. I can sleep 10 hours get up, eat something and then be so sleepy for the next five hours. I am falling asleep in my computer chair and I’m not getting anything done! It seems after the five hours are up, I’m not depressed and feeling much better, but this can’t go on. I thought it would get better because the doctor said to give it two weeks and call him if I wasn’t better. Well, since he is not in on Mondays, I will give him a call on Tuesday and see what can be done.

Such is my life with depression. It seems to never stop. 

After writing this blog for almost two months now, I have realized I cannot continue writing about my life without including depression.

I was diagnosed with depression about 25 years ago when my son was very little. I was working full time at an office job at the time, along with trying to raise a small son and living with an alcoholic husband. I started to see a physiologist that was referred to me by my internist. I started on medicine and it seemed to help a lot at the time.

Over the years, my son has grown up and is now 26 years old, and I divorced the alcoholic husband and am now on disability and not working outside the home. I am married to a very caring man and have been for almost 10 years. I am on disability because of the depression and also because of a degenerated disk in my back that causes me extreme pain at times.

Depression affects most days of my life. I will give more details on how it affecting me at the present time tomorrow.

Today is the first day of the new year of 2009. Happy New Year! 

Did you make New Year resolutions?

I figured out many years ago that New Year’s resolutions were somewhat hopeless statements. I have broken more New Year’s resolutions then kept them. I resolved in the past to quit smoking, lose weight, and be good (when I was much younger) but they never seem to stay resolved. I still smoke and I’m still fat, so why bother?

This year, I slept in, (until 5 pm) ate bunches of crackers and cheese and just chilled. My hubby watched the recorded Rose’s parade and I just worked on writing on the computer. This was a very nice New Years Day! Hope yours was grand too!

Evidently the big sales that most stores hoped would save them this year didn’t happen this Christmas season. Stores are still reducing prices down to the very depths in order to get shoppers to come through their doors. 

More and more stores are filing for bankruptcy protection, some that even surprised me. I remember shopping for my son years ago at the KB Toy store in our mall. I thought it was the best toy store around. They filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this month. I was really shocked at that one, even though our local store closed in our mall many years ago.

Another surprise for me was Circuit City. When we finally got a Circuit City store to our city, I was ecstatic! However, Best Buy built within two blocks of our Circuit City store within two years which I am sure affected them. Circuit City filed for bankruptcy protection last month. They do plan to keep on operating. 

The bottom line is people are not spending any more than they have to. If they still have a job, they are afraid of losing it and if they have already lost their job, they don’t have any money to spend for luxury items anymore. 

A family in Irvine, California brought home a box of crackers and it had $10,000 in a white envelope in it. What a shock! They didn’t feel right in just spending it, so they called the local police who thought the money might be part of a drug deal. 

The police heard from the grocery store who said that a hysterical older woman had come in earlier, totally upset because she had accidentally returned a box of crackers with her life savings in it. The store had restocked the box instead of destroying it as it usually does. Evidently, the California family had purchased that gold mine of crackers. 

I guess the elderly lady wasn’t that grateful about getting her money back, as the California family didn’t hear from her and didn’t even get a small reward. That’s a shame. They should have gotten something for being so honest and not spending the money. Instead, they called the officials and returned the money to its rightful owner. 

Every year for 13 years, Snowzilla has risen again. In Anchorage, Alaska a giant snowman has been createdin Billy Powers’s front yard. He says he doesn’t know how it was built or by whom. This year it is 25 feet high and city officials are having a fit, again.

They say it is an eyesore and against city codes. They had asked Billy Powers not to build it this year, but it has appeared again. Powers has rung up mountains of fines because of this great snowman. His neighbors are upset because of all the traffic going by to see the great Snowzilla and it is just causing a massive problem traffic jam.

I don’t see what the problem is. In fact, I think it is really cute! It had to take tons of manpower to create this massive snowman. How can someone not love this fantastic snowman named Snowzilla!

Christmas is finally over!! Thank goodness!

I spent my Christmas day sleeping. My son woke me up early. He came over to get his Christmas and couldn’t stay long as his dad brought him and he was waiting in the driveway. I wrote out his check, all the while him mentioning to me that he couldn’t believe I didn’t have it ready since I knew he was coming. Bah Hum Bug! He’s lucky he got anything.

I decided I was still tired so I went back to bed with some Vicadin. Since I fell the other day on my back, I have been in pain. The Vicadin must have really knocked me out because I didn’t wake up until 9:30pm. I guess could say I slept away Christmas. No problem though, nothing was going on anyway.

I hope you had a better Christmas day than I did.