When you have six incurable diseases, are a cancer survivor since 1983, and were forced to retire early due to health and income problems, you have probably seen your share of really, really bad, horrible, rotten, no-good, black-hearted, totally-depressive days. Yep, me too. I just made it through a four-day, no-air-breathing illness, potential car problems, and too much work with too little energy to apply to it. But I made it through. I have secret knowledge.
I have restored myself to light and life in a number of ways. One was through happy discovery. I was able to peanutize myself with the help of a movie promotion I have been following on Facebook. http://www.peanutizeme.com/ This link allows you to turn yourself into a Charles M. Schulz comic strip character with Charlie Brown, Snoopy and the gang. Doing something nutty and foolish is a way to charm and dig and laugh yourself out of depression. It wasn’t all easy and stuff, though. I had to copy my hair and twirl it upside down to get the beard. And I also had to laugh about the chimney growing out of the top of my head like a brick unicorn horn. It’s the kind of goofy stuff that gives a semi-serious artist fits of giggling. So I owe BlueSky Studios not only my thanks, but the link in this paragraph as well. The advertising campaign for the new movie may have saved my life.
Another thing that helped was solving the automobobble problem. My little Ford Fiesta, the Ozzy Osbourne of motor cars, had a heat-fit yesterday in the middle of Lewisville, Texas, Interstate Thirty-Five rush-hour traffic. It developed a seemingly permanent “check-engine” light that threatened an Ozzy at the Alamo moment on the access road. The rush-hour stress built up in me to the point that my blood-sugar dropped and we barely crawled into Taco Bueno to cure it with crispy beef tacos and bean burritos. I have absolutely no money left in savings for more car repairs. So, I crawled into the Walmart oil-change center this morning and pried twenty dollars out of my wallet to get the car-juice sloshed and swirled. Low and behold, after having to sign a waiver that said the problems the car had were the ones it came in with, the new car-juice solved the problem. The engine purrs again and the car has completely forgotten about that “check engine” light, and possibly the biting-the-heads-off-bats thing as well.
So, here is me. You can compare Grumpy-Me to the Peanutized-Me and evaluate whether I appear to be worth saving or not. Notice, I am either holding a newly-purchased Barbie’s little sister doll to add to my maddeningly growing doll collection, or I have managed to kidnap a middle-school girl from Lilliput. I am happy again. At least, I have that old goofy grin again that indicates the pain is not overwhelming… and once again I have overcome!
I should also add that I have been getting work done on my novel, Snow Babies.
Catch a Falling Star 