long time no see

I am alive and very much wanting to do some furious blogging, but, alas, my replacement hard drive has yet to arrive from Dell, and my desktop decided it's not much interested in going online anymore (causing it to have a run-in with a hammer, but that's neither here nor there). This puts me at the mercy of la biblioteca, which gives me one measly hour to gather my thoughts and spin my tales here at Portland's Central Library. Since I haven't blogged in so long, it's a task I'm hardly up to, so I'm dropping in briefly to express gratitude to everyone who commented on my last entry.

The whole to medicate or not to medicate issue is fraught with opportunity for debate. My personal opinion is that pills are overprescribed. I went to my gyno, a general practitioner, a couple years ago for an annual examination of my lady parts. He asked me how I'd been feeling. I told him I wasn't sleeping well and felt inexplicably tired all the time. He said I was suffering from mild depression and asked if I wanted a prescription. I'd been against the idea but mulled it over, thinking I could possibly be missing good times and fun feelings and the solving of every single problem I'd ever had (perhaps even the resurrection of my dearly departed mother) by refusing. I came to my senses after a few days and decided the pills weren't for me. For one thing, should they really be that easy to come by? No referral to a shrink? No Rorschach-like evaluation test? This particular doctor had only seen me once or twice before so it wasn't like he even knew me well enough to say, Hey, I see you're not yourself lately, before offering meds. Like Sahara, I became suspect of drugs, especially as they are doled out to women.

But then, I see Faith's point, too. In some cases, depression can be debilitating. I'm not one to stand against pills when they're absolutely necessary. Problem is, often times so little is done to make the determination. I pictured my doctor out on some junket, floating on the turquoise waters surrounding St. Kitts, holding up his champagne glass in salute to the pharmaceutical company that put him there. Like in a movie, my mind's camera pulls out to reveal the words painted on the boat: "The Good Ship Zoloft." For now, like Lady Lino and Ellen said, I'll stick with making stuff. And, Sahara, friendship certainly helps, too.

I'm almost down to the last ten minutes of my allotted time and it's hard for me to write under this kinda pressure, but I'll be back here on a regular basis pretty soon (won't I Dell? Won't I?). I've been traveling some, and I've got the pictures to prove it. San Francisco, Tucson, Portland. Tales of yarn all over the place.