Beating the blues

Hello again wonderful readers, here I am again to regale you with tales of my awesomely awesome life full of exciting happenings and much merriment like.....um.......nope I've got nothing. Today was actually a pretty blah day for me, full of malaise (I love that word) and generalised self pity. There was nothing I could actually put my finger on that was causing my bad mood, it just appeared out of the blue somewhere between putting my slippers on and finishing my first coffee of the day. And it hung around like an unwanted guest for the better part of the day. My mum was incredibly gentle on me the entire day, she never said a word when I didn't get out of my pyjamas until after dinner, and she even thanked me for cleaning the lounge room, even though it was all Miss K's toys that were causing the mess. Given I haven't had a mood this filthy for a long time, I think she was either prepared to make allowances for me, or she was just too worried about me to care about anything else.

Now everyone has bad days, and I am guilty of more than my fair share of them, but for me, bad days like this are never a good sign. I'm not sure if I have ever mentioned it in my previous posts, but I have suffered from depression since I was in my late teens. At the moment I am not receiving any real treatment for it, but that is because I have been coping successfully without treatment for about 12 months now. But as the threat of post natal depression is very real for me, I monitor my moods very carefully, as do several other members of my family. But for now, I seem to be ok as long as I have access to music, and as strange as it sounds, do some housework every now and again.

The housework is for several reasons. The first being that the messier my environment is, the harder I find it to cope with my life in general. I have never really been able to cope with clutter and my mum spent my childhood writing out lists for me to help me get through even the simplest of tasks like cleaning my room and doing the dishes. To this day, if I have to pack an overnight bag, I will write a list of everything I will need first to make sure I don't forget anything. (This isn't a unique thing I know, but anyone who has to write lists to get jobs done will understand what I have to deal with.) The other way housework works is actually pretty childish, and kind of embarrassing for me to admit, but we're all friends here so I don't mind sharing my dirty secrets with you my wonderful audience. You see doing housework when I feel like crap makes me feel like a martyr. I get this mindset that I must be such a wonderful and caring person seeing I am doing my chores even though I feel terrible, and I wear this hair shirt with such a grim sense of self satisfaction that by the time I've finished my work, I'm so proud of myself for overcoming such adversity I cheer up immensely. I know this is not my most attractive quality, but I've never said I was anything more than human.

But my best antidote to a good dose of the blues has got to be Miss K. It is a well known fact that babies are incredibly sensitive to the moods of the people around them, and Miss K is no exception. Her reaction to my bad moods can go one of two ways. If she herself is having a bad day, it seems to make her own moods much worse, and I am forced to forget about myself in order to make her OK. But if, like today she is having a good day, she spends a lot of time trying to make me laugh, or gives me extra cuddles and kisses to comfort me. And it works every single time. I can never stay sad for long when Miss K is taking care of me, and I love that I have such an empathetic and caring daughter. I know she is doing it for herself as much as she is doing it for me, because she hates to see me unhappy as it disturbs her entire world, but I don't see that as a bad thing at all. One day, she will probably end up the clown of the family just like her mother, and I know from personal experience that everybody loves a clown. 

Well as it has been a new day for a whole 24 minutes now, I am going to welcome this new day in the best way I know how, by going to bed. Enjoy your day wonderful readers, if you too are having a bad day, go listen to some awesome music or play tea parties with a child and watch how quickly your stress disappears.