Never Enuff SEASONAL AFFECTIVE DISORDER
Dec. 11th, 2013 08:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraNine hours of light. Sun rises at 7:12am and sets at 4:25pm.
Doesn't help that I spend most of those hours in the world's ugliest office. By the time I leave to go home, it's pitch black.
Exercise has always been what's saved me in the past when full spectrum sunlight is scarce. But I don't have much interest in exercising in the dark.
I suppose I could join a gym. But I hate gyms.
All I really want to do is sleep and veg. And star in a remake of Old Yeller because at any time of the night or day this time of year, it only takes me about five seconds to burst into tears. (The futility of life. The frustrating interface of iTunes 11. The poor little doggies and kitties without homes. Etcetera.)
Honestly, I don't see how people who live in the northern-most reaches of Scandinavia and Japan where winter sun may shine for as little as five hours a day manage to cope. Presumably, they eat a lot of fish, high in Vitamin D, DHA and other omega fatty acids. I'm trying to see this in terms of the extremely white skin of the homogeneous Scandinavians – is it some kind of genetic mutation selected for because white skin absorbs what little sunlight there is more efficiently? Perhaps all the dark-skinned Vikings threw themselves into the fjords during basic Rape and Plunder training. But surely melatonin is what allows people to harvest available sunlight most efficiently for Vitamin D production. Melatonin is what they prescribe for people suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder, after all.
It seems to be worse this year than how I remember it being in the past.
Framing it as a test of willpower – You vill finish baking Christmas cookies to send to ze troops back home! -- doesn't seem to be working at all.
###
At least I've managed to frame the opening scenes of my fictional foray into Huguette Clark-land. Ybel and Christopher work at the Buttercup Bakery together. She's a waitress; he's a line cook. They smoke cigarettes together, grow friendly, start doing psychedelic drugs together and eventually Ybel invites him back to the seedy North Oakland apartment to play with her toys. (Shades of Roberta.) She has managed to rescue her old dollhouse from the ruins of her childhood, and they act out a scene where a doll leaps from the dollhouse parapets just before Christopher jumps out her window. Thus the incidental action supports the basic theme of the novel.
Interesting factoids about the Buttercup Bakery:
• Suze Orman worked as a waitress there for many years when her finances were just as messy as yours and mine, before she became a famous Money Guru.
• I worked there as a waitress too. Very briefly. If I was introduced to Suze Orman, I don't remember her.
• I generally parked my car in the Bank of America parking lot across the street from the Buttercup. The parking lot abutted a building that had once been owned by Marybeth's grandfather, the one who founded the Plumbing Dynasty. Susan's brother Steve lived in that building when I was first going out with him. Steve is one of the regrets with which I line my pillow.
One night, very late, I was leaving the Buttercup, my purse slung over my shoulder by a long strap, when a kid materialized from the parking lot shadows and tried to snatch it. I was studying Tai Kwan Do in those days. I landed a roundhouse kick to the kid's face and heard a crunch as I broke his nose.
The kid fell in a dazed heap.
"Are you all right?" I asked the kid, and he began to cry.
For a minute I thought about calling an ambulance. Or possibly auditioning for a remake of Old Yeller.
Then I thought better of it, got in my car and drove off.
Doesn't help that I spend most of those hours in the world's ugliest office. By the time I leave to go home, it's pitch black.
Exercise has always been what's saved me in the past when full spectrum sunlight is scarce. But I don't have much interest in exercising in the dark.
I suppose I could join a gym. But I hate gyms.
All I really want to do is sleep and veg. And star in a remake of Old Yeller because at any time of the night or day this time of year, it only takes me about five seconds to burst into tears. (The futility of life. The frustrating interface of iTunes 11. The poor little doggies and kitties without homes. Etcetera.)
Honestly, I don't see how people who live in the northern-most reaches of Scandinavia and Japan where winter sun may shine for as little as five hours a day manage to cope. Presumably, they eat a lot of fish, high in Vitamin D, DHA and other omega fatty acids. I'm trying to see this in terms of the extremely white skin of the homogeneous Scandinavians – is it some kind of genetic mutation selected for because white skin absorbs what little sunlight there is more efficiently? Perhaps all the dark-skinned Vikings threw themselves into the fjords during basic Rape and Plunder training. But surely melatonin is what allows people to harvest available sunlight most efficiently for Vitamin D production. Melatonin is what they prescribe for people suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder, after all.
It seems to be worse this year than how I remember it being in the past.
Framing it as a test of willpower – You vill finish baking Christmas cookies to send to ze troops back home! -- doesn't seem to be working at all.
At least I've managed to frame the opening scenes of my fictional foray into Huguette Clark-land. Ybel and Christopher work at the Buttercup Bakery together. She's a waitress; he's a line cook. They smoke cigarettes together, grow friendly, start doing psychedelic drugs together and eventually Ybel invites him back to the seedy North Oakland apartment to play with her toys. (Shades of Roberta.) She has managed to rescue her old dollhouse from the ruins of her childhood, and they act out a scene where a doll leaps from the dollhouse parapets just before Christopher jumps out her window. Thus the incidental action supports the basic theme of the novel.
Interesting factoids about the Buttercup Bakery:
• Suze Orman worked as a waitress there for many years when her finances were just as messy as yours and mine, before she became a famous Money Guru.
• I worked there as a waitress too. Very briefly. If I was introduced to Suze Orman, I don't remember her.
• I generally parked my car in the Bank of America parking lot across the street from the Buttercup. The parking lot abutted a building that had once been owned by Marybeth's grandfather, the one who founded the Plumbing Dynasty. Susan's brother Steve lived in that building when I was first going out with him. Steve is one of the regrets with which I line my pillow.
One night, very late, I was leaving the Buttercup, my purse slung over my shoulder by a long strap, when a kid materialized from the parking lot shadows and tried to snatch it. I was studying Tai Kwan Do in those days. I landed a roundhouse kick to the kid's face and heard a crunch as I broke his nose.
The kid fell in a dazed heap.
"Are you all right?" I asked the kid, and he began to cry.
For a minute I thought about calling an ambulance. Or possibly auditioning for a remake of Old Yeller.
Then I thought better of it, got in my car and drove off.
