The Care and Feeding of Your Depressive

No, believe it or not, I've not abandoned this blog, like I've abandoned so many other well-intentioned projects over the years.  I've been reading plenty, I've been lucky enough to be added to a list of people who get to review certain projects for Viking/Penguin, and there's been tons going on.  The Boy spent several months away from home out surveying, I've finished a chapter of my dissertation, I've been ghosting in and out as a staff writer for Tosche Station, and I made it through yet another semester.  The end of my Ph.D. program is in sight within the next year, I think, and I might actually make it.  But the problem has not been that I've had too much to do to write.

I've never made any secret of the fact that I have clinical depression and an anxiety disorder.  I don't keep it a secret from anyone--family, friends, even my students often know that I have a mental illness.  I'm open and candid about the fact that I have it because I know how hard it can be for people to seek help when they are having problems, and I very strongly believe that my openness about the subject can help lessen the social stigma attached to getting help for mental illness.

What I don't tell people is how severe my depression is.  I'm on several different medications and I regularly see a doctor regarding my mood issues. Most of the time, my issues have been more related to anxiety, but recently, depression has once again become one of the issues that has come back up.  Sometimes I honestly don't even notice the depression, except for the fact that I sleep between 12-15 hours a day. (At times, I have slept more, but The Boy has put a stop to that.)  It's not until the medication kicks in really well at times and I'm more cheerful than I've been in ages that I remember what it's like to be the person I was in high school before this started. 

It's also closely intertwined with my anxiety.  In the last few months, I've been so agoraphobic that even the idea of leaving the house has caused me to burst into tears, and the only place I've been able to go has been to school.  School, along with home, is safe, for some reason, and I can relax there, mostly.  Still, there are days when I hide in my office and sometimes fight the urge to hide under my desk, even though I enjoy all of my officemates. The Boy wanted to go see his parents for several weekends in a row, but I simply could not face the idea of leaving home, even to go see my in-laws, who are as lovely, loving, and generous people as walk the earth.

The hardest part is trying to explain to my husband how I'm feeling.  For being a writer, I'm crap with words most of the time, more so when depression is wearing me down, because that is the time when I want to talk the least.  Often times, when I do manage to talk, I'm flippant, and I know that frustrates him, because while I'm talking, I'm still not being communicative.  In fact, I'd thought about titling this post "The Care and Feeding of Your Depressive," because that's what I do when things get too serious--I make a joke, deflect it elsewhere, hold off the serious discussion.

But it's not a bad idea, in all seriousness.  So here's my best shot--for my husband, for my family, for my friends, for the universe--the things I can't always say, the things that people like me can't always say, but need to.  It's easier to write it than it is to talk about it.

1. I would give anything to be a Real Girl and to be the person you think I am.

Having depression sometimes feels like you've got someone working your puppet strings.  You're going through the motions without ever really living.  That's part of the reason it's hard to get involved in things, because it doesn't feel like it's actually you involved in the activity.

You can tell me that I'm beautiful, that you love me, that everything's going to be okay, and the voice in the back of my head is always going to be telling me that it's not true.  Sometimes I can make it shut up and believe you. Sometimes I can't. But a lot of the time, that voice is also telling me that you fell in love with someone who was better, who wasn't as depressed, who functioned properly, who was cheerful and fun to be around.  That voice is the voice that tells me that you would be better off with someone else who was right in the head.

2. I feel terrible.

I feel terrible on a ton of levels.  There's the wet blanket of the depression.  There's the heart-racing panic of an anxiety attack.  For me, migraines come right along with anxiety attacks.  Lots of people just experience general body aches and soreness from depression, actual physical symptoms that are no less real because they come from a mental source. I am tired all the time.  A lot of the times, I really don't want to eat much.  And I know that makes you worried.  But then that leads to:

3.  The Merry-Go-Round of Guilt.

I hate this.  I already feel guilty for not being everything I think I should be for you.  Then you want to help so badly, all the time, and it is so clear that you feel guilt for not being able to help, for not feeling like you are enough.  Then that guilt comes back around for making you feel bad.  It's less a merry-go-round than it is a gyre, circling around and around and never ending, whereas friction eventually causes a merry-go-round to stop.

Part of this is my fault.  The depression makes me overly sensitive, and so I take every sigh, every tiny look of exasperation straight to heart.  I appreciate the nods and the soft "Hey, call me if you need anything," but know that I won't call.  There are a few people who I will vent to--but only vent, not cry to--because I can't deal with spreading that guilt elsewhere.  There are some people who have to deal with it.  I don't want to add that elsewhere.

4. Hulk go Smash

I don't want to say I have uncontrollable anger, because my anger is very definitely controlled--otherwise, countless dishes and household appliances would have been smashed by now, and there would be any number of people nursing wounds inflicted by my tongue.  But it is always there lately.  The urge to throw something, to put hit something, to rip something to shreds is bubbling below the surface, and there's little that would fill me with as much satisfaction as being set loose in a ceramic factory slated for destruction.

I don't know where this is coming from.  It's something I've got to discuss with my doctor, because it's something that's been coming up again and again lately, more often as I get frustrated, usually with myself or with someone close to me, usually related to the merry-go-round of guilt because I simply want it to stop, and throwing something would be punctuation, the exclamation point to it all.

5. I'm trying.

It doesn't look like it. It looks like I'm lying on the couch, it looks like I'm diving into a book or the internet, or sleeping to get away.  Yes, sometimes that's true.  But I am trying.  Part of the reason I'm so tired is because I am fighting every minute of the day.  I try to do things to keep my energy up.  I listen to really awful pop music because the beat keeps me up and going. I had a really awful caffeine addiction going (I have had to stop that, though).  I try to have my classes scheduled as early as possible in the morning.

That also means I have to prioritize.  If I've spent all day at school, then no, I don't want to go out to eat or hang out that evening.  I'm tired, I've spent all my energy dealing with people, and I'm done fighting for the day.  I have to put my energy where it's most needed.  When you're suffering from agoraphobia, sometimes that means that you don't even have the energy to go to the grocery.  And trust me, it sucks.

So why am I sleeping?  Or reading some trashy book?  Because for a brief moment in time, it shuts my brain down long enough, either by shutting it down in sleep, or by living some other existence in fiction, that my own is not so overwhelming.

As far as panic attacks go, I have no idea what sets them off.  Sometimes I have a clear idea.  Other days, I simply wake up with them.  Sometimes they simply blindside me, and I find myself wanting to start crying for no reason.  But most of the time, I can control myself, and you'll never know I was having one.  I'd rather have it that way.

There is no "just getting over this."  If you've ever said that to someone with depression or other illness, you should be ashamed of yourself for perpetuating the myth that mental illness is not a real, valid illness, and you are partly responsible for every crime committed by a person with a mental illness who was not able to receive the help they needed.

6. The fact that my existence is sometimes overwhelming to me has nothing to do with you.

It is not your fault. My brain chemistry is screwed up. You want to blame yourself? Fine.  Then President Bartlet has something he wants to say to you.

You know what else?  It's not my fault either.

 

And I have news for some people out there.  I can and do pray about this. But continuing to have depression is not a measure of my faith or a sign that I do not pray enough or a sign that I believe things that God does not approve of.

It is a sign that God has great things ahead for me and that I will need the strength I am learning now to manage them.  

 

Mother Teresa once said "I know God won't give me anything I can't handle. I just wish He didn't trust me so much."  But if He trusts me in this, which is so relatively miniscule, then He will trust me with the big things.

This is my hope.  This is what keeps me going when I think everything is falling apart around me, even when I know better.  This is what helps me when I think that everyone else would be better off if I retreated from their lives and just lived my existence by myself with my cats, away from everyone else.

And hope is a thing with feathers.

Inspiration

My friend Crystal over at Serving Joyfully asked this morning if anyone had seen her motivation.  I laughed when I read her post this morning.  I'd had a pitched battle with myself over whether or not I was going to go for a run, and had just come back when I'd read it, and I laughed because oh, how I recognized the feeling.  This week is the first time I've been for a run in several weeks, and the picture she posted with the quote "When you feel like quitting, think about why you started!" was too apropos.

But when I was in the shower, I really did start thinking about it.  Crystal's post was primarily about her weight loss goals, and I understand.  I will admit to the internet at large: I am at the heaviest I've ever been right now.  It's not something I'm proud of, but it is something I want to fix.  To that end, I've been working on being more active, and I've been working on trying to overcome my picky eating.

But what are my motivations?

• I want to be healthy when my husband and I decide we want to have children.  This way, we can give our children the best possible start in life.
• I want to be healthy for my children, to set an example of an active life that they can follow the rest of their lives.
• I want to be healthy for my husband, as a journey towards a healthier life we take together, and so he has an active, healthy wife for years to come.
• I want to be healthy for myself.  The more active I am, not only the more physically healthy I become, but the more mentally healthy. 

What do I mean by healthy?  It's not simply a matter of dress size or weight.  I will never fit into a size 0.  But a 10 or a 12 is a reasonable goal.  But I want to be able to have the energy I need to do everything I want to do in a day without needing a nap.  I want to be able to look in the mirror and be satisfied with who I see.  And I want to truly, honestly believe my husband when he tells me that I am beautiful.  (I am beautiful to him, no matter what.  I know this.  But I don't know that I'll intrinsically believe it until I feel that way to myself.)

But being healthy isn't the only thing I need motivation for.  I'm sitting here on the couch at my mom and dad's, glaring at the books on Foucault sitting next to me.  While I've been making progress this week (if you can call coming up with more questions than answers progress), I did decide yesterday that a valid life choice would be to watch the three Harry Potter movies I hadn't seen instead of reading.  In some ways, I can't decide which goal is more intimidating--losing weight or finishing a dissertation.

Admittedly, there have been days during my Ph.D. program when I have looked at the stack of books and paper and asked myself why I'm doing this.  What were my motivations?  I always joke that I wanted to read for a living.

Academia is stuck up.  Get a job at a community or technical college instead of a four-year university, or work as contingent faculty too long, and universities wonder why you couldn't get a "good" job before then (bad economies, elimination of tenure, and refusal of baby boomers to retire not withstanding).  So why am I doing this?

Then there are moments you remember.  A moment when a very brave young man stands up in front of his class, explains to them what it's like to be transgender, and how they can help stop the bullying of LGBT students in public schools.  A moment when two girls come to that young man with Bible verses, not to bash him, but to show him that real Christians should behave with love and acceptance, not judgment.  A moment when another young man starts coming to class, starts making an effort, starts pushing and experimenting and even liking writing.

It strikes me that I didn't get into academia to do research.  I got in it to teach.  And now the idea of a community or technical college isn't far from my mind. 

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None of this answers Crystal's question about what we do when we need motivation.  Well, Crystal, here is my answer for you.  When I need motivation, I start thinking about inspiration.  Who inspires me to be better than who I am?  And how can I inspire them to be better as well?


God.
My husband.
My father.
My brothers.
My in-laws.
Dr. K and Dr. P.
Ami.
My students (that brave young man in particular).
My colleagues.

And last, but certainly not least, you, Crystal, are a source of inspiration to me.  So maybe we're going about this the wrong way.  Maybe we need to stop looking for motivation and start looking for inspiration.

RAACK

Well, it's been a while since I posted anything here.  Part of that has been because I've been spending a fair amount of time over at Tosche Station, where I'm one of the bloggers for the site, bringing an academic point of view to Star Wars and geek culture. 

The other part is that I've been doing nothing but reading brain candy for the last week, and it has been glorious.  Last week was finals, but my students had all their stuff in before finals, so all I had to do was administrative work last week.  I took the rest of the week to read whatever I wanted, and it was wonderful.  I've been working through some of Kresley Cole's novels, as well as Christine Feehan--I do love getting hold of a new series.

But today, I would like to talk about a recent disturbing trend I've noticed in some of the books I've been reading, and to announce the formation of a new organization: RAACK (Readers Against Awesome Car Killing).

Let me explain.

Fans of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum novels know that bad things happen to cars in those books.  Generally speaking, they get blown up.  Ranger, one of the love interests, has cars for Stephanie as a line item under entertainment for the guys who work for him, as they all start up a book every time Stephanie gets a new car to bet on how long it will take before something happens to it.

Okay, that's fine and funny.  But if you know something's going to happen, why would you give her a new car?  Or, in what really caused me to wince, in Smokin' Seventeen was, well, a Shelby GT350.

This means this was one of two possible cars.  The first is the new 45th anniversary edition of the Shelby GT350 that was announced in 2010.  This picture of a 2012 Shelby GT--well, it makes me drool, and not just because I've watched far too much Top Gear with my husband.  I mean, just look at it.  It's a thing of beauty.

But the destruction of this car, while sad, could be sadder.  You see, the original Shelby GT350 was only made between 1965 and 1970.  That's right.  It means that Stephanie Plum could have managed to destroy this beauty (the picture here is a 1967).

This hurts my soul.  A lot.  I mean, just look at it!  How do you look at this car and say, "Yup, I'm going to write a book where one of these gets blown up!"

It's enough to make someone weep.

In any case, I thought that surely, I wouldn't come across anymore awesome cars being destroyed as I made my way through my romance novel foray as I caught up with the book series I'd fallen behind on over the school year.  Oh, but I was wrong.

I picked up Kresley Cole's Dark Desires After Dusk.  (Shut up about the name.)  The characters escape a variety of interesting bad guys in a Bugatti Veyron.  Want to know why it's awesome?  Well, I'll let Jeremy Clarkson tell you from the AutoVista section of Forza 4:

For those of you not wanting to listen to a pedantic Brit talk about how awesome this car is, I'll make it brief.  The Veyron is the fastest road legal production car in the world, the super sport topping out at 267 miles per hour, supported by an 8 liter, W16 engine which produces 1200 brake horsepower.  At top speed, it burns through an entire tank of gas in 12 minutes, and can shred a set of tires in about the same amount of time.  The base price is 1.7 million dollars (US).

And they wrecked it.

Apparently, I made a squeaky noise when that happened.

I will give this--Cole spends a good bit of time talking about how awesome the car is.  And then she kills it.  It folds in on itself like it's made from aluminum foil.  A Veyron.

So.  I would like to announce the formation of a new organization known as RAACK: Readers Against Awesome Car Killing.  Ladies and gentlemen, authors of the world, please, we beg you: if you're going to have your character wreck a car, do us a favor and wreck a Gremlin.  Anything else just hurts our feelings.

Enough already.

It's been a hard couple weeks. And the next week and a half are going to be worse.

I'm taking the Ph.D. preliminary exams in Victorian literature and in Restoration and 18th Century literature next week. I've been taking practice exams. I've been studying. And I've been doing a lot of other things that will distract me from the massive anxiety attack waiting to happen.

I called my mama this morning just to hear her voice and for her to tell me that everything was going to be okay. I don't do that a lot anymore--call my mama, I mean. It's too hard sometimes. Today was good; today, she was herself. Today, she was my mom.

Everyone else has been telling me that things are going to be fine too. Everyone comes up to me and says, "You're going to do great! You're so smart, you'll ace these." I want to shout at them that they have no idea, that I'm such a fraud. I'm afraid of failing one or both exams and disappointing everyone who assured me that I would do so well. It's Academic Insecurity Syndrome, we used to joke. Professors say that it never goes away. Maybe so, but it's never felt quite as real as it does right now. Dr. K tells me not to worry either, that I'm doing fine. As much as I love her, I still don't know if I believe her.

I've got a lot riding on this. The last ten years worth of work, my academic future, both immediate and not-so-much. I can taste anxiety in my mouth--it's bitter and nasty, and it won't go away, no matter how much medication I take. I'm not the only one; there are at least eight or nine of us taking exams next week, and I know that the office will not be pleasant next week.

There are other things. Other worries. Friends of a friend who were terribly beaten last week, who have been on my mind, the grandmother of another friend who took a terrible fall. A friend who suddenly finds herself in a position she never thought she'd be in, a position that makes me hurt for her and jealous all at the same time. And then the normal everyday worries of an everyday family.

There are good things. My husband has been taking such good care of me. For example, I haven't done the dishes in weeks--he takes care of all of that so I have time to concentrate and study, and then to rest afterwards. He holds me when I start to panic, makes sure that I'm going to be okay. Reminds me of what I always say to him: "God has taken care of us so far. No reason to think He's going to stop now."

Today, especially, I am homesick, though that may not be the right word. I miss my undergraduate years. There was studying and tests, but none of them were this important. I had lunch with my friends and the professors almost every day. In the springtime, Eastern smells like old books and mold, even just walking through the campus, and while that may sound disgusting, it's comforting. Sitting out by the fountain, chatting with friends, reading in the Ravine, hiding in the fourth-floor stacks of the library, reveling in the smell of old books. I loved that school. Still do.

I have to go teach here directly, a discussion of rhetoric and how students can reach an audience. I wish I could put what I teach into practice, teach myself how to argue myself out of wanting to crawl under the desk or pull the covers over my head and hide. But if there's any audience hard to reach, it's the audience of one.

Farewell to an old standby

After 244 years, the Encyclopedia Britannica is finally going out of print.

This bothers me in many ways. It's not that the Encyclopedia Britannica is disappearing, but it is going to an online version. So what happens when the zombie apocalypse happens and all the computers don't work? Will we all be forced to get our knowledge from out of date encyclopedias?

Well, I did growing up, and it hasn't seemed to hurt me any. My parents were determined that we needed an encyclopedia in our house, but we couldn't afford a new one. My mom managed to pick up one from a yard sale--I'm not sure that it was the Britannica, off the top of my head. Twenty-six maroon tomes with faded gold lettering from 1956. I remember very distinctly reading in 1995 about "when man someday makes it to the moon."

I had a conversation with a colleague this morning about whether or not this was taking knowledge away from those who don't necessarily have technological access, but given the cost of encyclopedias, it was doubtful that they would be in a lower-income home anyway (at least not new--perhaps an out of date edition, like the one we had). We gathered that the idea is that if you have access to a library where you would be able to see a normal encyclopedia, you would have access to computers. But computers in libraries are often busy, assuming the library has them at all, and there are some public libraries in poor areas that don't.

I understand that this is an economic decision, and that the Encyclopedia Britannica print edition has probably been losing money for the last ten or fifteen years, if not more. But I do still hope that there will be a few print copies out there from the updated material, perhaps in the Library of Congress or in the Britannica offices. Just in case the zombies come.

It's Fall Break!

And what have I done? Approximately nothing. I turned my Fulbright into the State Department on Friday, and now I have nothing to do but wait until January. So I've nothing since then.

That's not entirely true. I finished one cross stitch project and have moved on to this one. I have no real idea why I've wanted to cross stitch this rooster so badly, but I have, and therefore, I have started, thanks partly to my sister-in-law who gave me my subscription for Christmas last year (which has been delightful), and thanks partly to Snarky Writer who toted me around town Friday, since I'd not had enough sleep the night before to be driving (and who also very kindly not only dragged me around town, but hit three craft stores with me, looking for the proper fabric for this project in a reasonable price range, because I refuse to pay $20 for a piece of 32 count linen).

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In other news, I hate AT&T. My phone broke the other night, and then AT&T, in attempting to fix it, broke it more--it now won't turn on it on. Their solution after that was for me to go buy a new phone. Fortunately, I have a very kind friend who is more than generous and who is sending me his old iPhone, though it won't be here until next week. In the meantime, I've been contemplating a response to AT&T. Though it's for bad PR, I thought about sending them a picture of Wil Wheaton collating papers. Still, it's not quite appropriate. I wonder if I could get a ragequit picture of Wil Wheaton shouting into his iPhone.

Actually...*goes running to Twitter for a minute* I should point out that while Wesley Crusher was an annoying little prick, Wil Wheaton is a nerd god.

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I noticed something odd when I went to the library to tutor a client of mine. I was looking around and saw some new books that just came out that I would have liked to have checked out. However, the library here does something odd: they charge two dollars to check a new fiction book out for a week.

Being a cheap-ass, and only having made ten dollars tutoring, I didn't come away with any of them, because if I've waited long enough for them not to buy them, then I can wait long enough for it to be free at the library. And Lord knows I have no problem with a library trying to raise some revenue for themselves, especially since I know that the great state of Tennessee is just so incredibly devoted to education and literacy. But something about that seemed just a little bit wrong to me. I did manage to get Kim Harrison's Pale Demon without having to pay extra for it. It joins the stack with Joanna Lindsey's That Perfect Someone. In the meantime this week, I've also got to work on Boswell's London Journal, and some poetry for 18th century and work on studying for a midterm.

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Anyway. I'm really behind on reviews, so here is a quick and dirty review of three books I just recently read, and then one really detailed review:

In Pursuit of Eliza Cynster: Fantastic. Generally speaking, Stephanie Laurens follows a certain pattern in her books where the heroine refuses to marry the hero until she gets a declaration of love from him. There is nothing like this here--it's real. They gradually fall in love. The hero is not just a warrior alpha male. He's also a scholar, but one who can kick butt when he needs to. In some ways, he reminded me very much of my husband. I have to say, this truly is my favorite of all of Laurens' novels that I've read, and I've read a good number of them. A+

When Strangers Marry: I've never read any of Lisa Kleypas' work before, and I was very entertained by this novel, in particular because while it's set during the early 19th century, it's not set in Regency England; instead, she sets the novel in a newly American New Orleans. That alone is incredibly interesting, because there are a whole other different set of conventions. Is it the best written novel? No, probably not. To be fair, it was a rewrite of her first novel, Only In Your Arms. B-

Wildest Hearts: This goes under the oldie but goodie category. It was a Jayne Ann Krentz paperback I scored from my mom, and I've read it before. It's really interesting to see something from the early 90s from her; the male character is very different from some of her other heroes. Something about her male characters in her earlier books are rather stuck-up. This one, Oliver, focuses on two things: business and ferns. That does seem to be one thing I remember from her earlier work: the heroes have some odd enthusiasms. Now that I've gone back to it: C.

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Now, on to the most important bit of this blog post. Terry Pratchett's Snuff was just released last Thursday, and in our jaunt around town, Snarky Writer took me to Barnes and Noble where I obtained said Discworld book. This one is especially important to me. Not only is it a new Discworld book, but it's a new Watch book, and given that I wrote my master's thesis on the Watch books, you can imagine just how excited I was.

So to my review. SPOILER ALERT. (That means close your browser, Dad, I'll bring it to you the next time I'm home.)



Sam Vimes has been forced to take a vacation, and when the Vimeses go out to Ramkin Hall, trouble invariably ensues when Vimes discovers a murder scene on the property--a young goblin woman. He's out of his jurisdiction, but that has never stopped him before and won't stop him now. We get a interesting look into a new society that Pratchett has put into the Disc, and the goblins are demanding justice--not just for the dead girl, but also for the way that other goblins have been rounded up and taken off.

Vimes, of course, won't let anything like this stand. He discovers that Lord Rust's son is involved, and this brings up one of the main themes of the book: rich versus poor. It's fairly obvious that this was written during the middle of the recession, because the struggle between rich and poor and what someone in Vimes' position--as the Duke of Ankh-Morpork--does to help out those less fortunate. It becomes part of what both Vimes and Carrot term "the terrible algebra of necessity." Goblin mothers, when they cannot feed their children, eat them instead. Then they build a pot, put the soul of the baby in it, and wait for it to return at a better time.

It turns out that Gravid Rust is transporting goblins away to work as slaves on tobacco plantations in Howondaland, where they are all dying, assisted by one rather awful character known as Stratford. One pot makes its way into a cigar, picked up by Fred Colon, who then becomes possessed, as if a goblin. Vimes, through all of this, is assisted by the quasi-demon that he picked up in Thud!, The Summoning Dark, which has left its mark on him and who he can interact with in his own head, Feeney, the somewhat inept country constable who is still learning how to be a policeman, and Willikins, his gentleman's gentleman who grew up in a street gang only a few lanes down from Vimes and who still retains all of his skills.

Stratford, though, is crazy, and does something that no man should ever do if he wants to live--try to kill Young Sam Vimes. But the elder Sam Vimes is a good man and simply would have taken him to jail. Willkins, though, is not a good man, and takes very unkindly to someone trying to hurt his family.

There are a couple of things that I really liked, small things. Vetinari is frustrated as hell with the Ankh-Morpork Times' crossword compiler. Willikins and Vimes have real conversations that are very friendly, even though Willikins works for Vimes. For the first time, it seems like Vimes has a real friend. Fred Colon and Nobby Nobbs have been his friends, but he can't talk to them about everything; they don't understand his position between the street and the aristocracy; Willikins does.

I was glad to see that Angua's promotion to Captain has finally taken hold permanently. Wee Mad Arthur's reappearance was fantastic and wonderful. I liked seeing that Vimes is really in love with Sibyl. I would have liked to have seen more of Carrot--the question of what Carrot will actually do as far as the kingship goes remains unanswered. But that's the only criticism that I have of this book.

The last two books, Making Money and Unseen Academicals, had a couple of problems. They weren't tightly plotted, and they relied far too much on poop jokes. That's not to say that there aren't some of those in Snuff, but they're reserved for Young Sam, who at six years old, is interested in very little else, which makes sense. This novel is so tightly put together that you can't see Pratchett's Alzheimer's at all.

At the same time, this is not a light novel. While there are some really great funny lines, the way that there are in all Pratchett novels, this is far more serious than any of his other novels. It's darker than Night Watch, even. It's dark, it's serious, and it's good. While Men at Arms will always be my favorite Discworld novel, I think Snuff has just become the best. This book is an A+, hands down.

Deliberately not reading

I had all these plans for May. We were going to go home and see family, then we were going to come home. I was going to clean house, thoroughly, clean out the closet, study for preliminary exams, get a headstart on my directed reading, and make in-roads into the stack of books on my nightstand.

This didn't actually happen.

We did go home and see family, which took one week of May. Then I ended up sick and was down for almost a week of just being sick and then three or four more days until the antibiotics kicked in good. Most of that time, I spent lying in the guest bed in our office, being pitiful, watching Top Gear, and when I felt well enough, cross-stitching.

It wasn't until this week that I realized...I hadn't read anything.

I suppose that's not true. I reread a couple of romance novels off and on, usually when I was sitting outside watching the charcoal chimney while The Boy prepared the rest of the things to go on the grill (I'm sorry, I don't touch ground beef. I just don't). The thought would occur to me that perhaps I could go sit in the bathtub and read, but I just couldn't drum up the enthusiasm for it because I didn't want to sit and read.

This bothered me a little when I started to think about it. I just didn't want to read. This has never happened to me before. Since when do I not want to read?

Maybe it was partly because most of my reading plans had revolved around preliminary exams. But I couldn't drum up the enthusiasm to dig into the book stack either. I suppose I did read Sizzling Sixteen during finals week, as I had little to do, but once school was out, I said forget it!

I've wondered if I'm hitting a point in my academic career where I'm experiencing the graduate student equivalent of senior-itis. Maybe. I've spent quite a bit of time cross-stitching instead of reading. It's also occurred to me that perhaps this is part of being married--it's easier to sit and cross-stitch and watch TV so I can carry on a conversation with my husband than it is to try to read and do the same thing. Or maybe I'm just tired of reading for the time being. In any case, thoughts from others in the same situation would be welcomed.

A Spenserian Stanza On the Pathetic Fallacy

The pathetic fallacy is a farce.
Ask anyone who has ever seen a dog,
Their tails wagging in the park
Or when their master comes home. Or for fog
On cat feet, is there another analog?
Or for a parakeet dancing away
To nothing more than a simple theme song?
I will attribute human feeling any day
To my natural world. Screw John Ruskin anyway.