Guess What?  I went shopping and I actually had fun!!!  I found out tonight that the stores are not crowded on Wednesday nights.   Since my daughter is out of town my husband and I went out to eat at a Mexican Restaurant and then we went to Walmart.  We went there to see if we could find a Wii and a Wii fit thing, they did not have either one.  So instead I bought some new clothes. I got a pair of black capris, a cute pair of jeans that turn into capris and two new shirts (one purple and one orange, my favorite colors).  I am excited about the jeans.  They actually fit and are not too long.  The problem I have with jeans is that with my fat rear end, often when I find jeans to fit that, the jeans are way too long.  These fit great.  I also got a new pair of cute black shoes that will go with my capris and my other pants.

Then we went to the grocery store.  I had fun there too.  For years before my depression started, I always did the grocery shopping by myself or with the kids, and they were smaller then.  It was a pain in the butt.  When my depression got bad and I could not leave the house my husband did all the grocery shopping.  Now we try and do it together and I realized tonight that I like it best that way.  We help each other and not one person is left to do all the shopping and has to put the groceries up themselves.  My husband unloads the groceries from the truck and I put them up.

I fully realize it is silly to get excited about shopping.  It has just been so long since I actually enjoyed it, that I am excited about it.  Also, finding a night when it is not crowded at the stores is exciting. Now I know when I want to go shopping Wednesday night is the time to go.

I know I have been in a down stage for the last week or so.  I am happy to be happy about something.

Be Happy, Neighbors!

I have been sleeping so much the last few many days.  I think there are several reasons for this.  One is that my psychiatrist has me taking my anti-anxiety more than I had been, due to the recent episode of anxiety.  Also my anti-anxiety medication is used as a sleep aid and when I wake up at night he wants me to take some then as well.  The result is that I feel sleepy all the time.  Today with my daughter gone, and with it being a bit chilly out, Minnie (the dog) and I cuddled under blankets and napped away most of the day.

Anna is going to be gone for the rest of the week.  My mom is town for a short while and Anna decided to go with mom to her place in Augusta.  That should be fun for Anna.

I  accidentally slept through my counseling session yesterday.  It seems I worried everyone in the office because I always show up.  The counselor called and we did a mini session on the phone and rescheduled.

I may be struggling mental health wise and that is the other reason I am sleeping so much.  My natural instinct is to sleep whenever I am feeling more than a little depressed.  Between having to put my oldest dog to sleep and some issues with my son, and a personal health thing that has cropped up, I am feeling a bit overwhelmed and down. Close your eyes if you have a delicate stomach….for whatever reason, when I have a bowel movement I am pooping what appears to be quite a bit of blood.  I figure it is probably not a huge problem, but it still makes me worry and the thought of having to go to the doctor for it causes me even more worry. I have been putting off going to the doctor because I honestly hate the thought of what I know the doctor is going to have to do to figure out what is going on.

I have been rather quiet when it comes to blogging the last couple of days because of what all has been on my mind, and I am sort of dreading the rest of the week with no counseling and no Anna to keep me distracted.  I think I need to dive into writing some blog posts to pass the time.

I hated to do it but I have had to start moderating my comments. Someone decided to attempt to sell viagra in the comment sections of my blog. After about three attempts on their part to do this, I not only deleted what they said I also banned their IP address.

I apologize to those of you who are legitimate readers and commenters. I do think by moderating the comments it will keep my blog enjoyable, because we will not have to deal with spammers

Welcome to Saturday: 9. What we’ve committed to our readers is that we will post 9 questions every Saturday. Sometimes the post will have a theme, and at other times the questions will be totally unrelated. Those weeks we do “random questions,” so-to-speak. We encourage you to visit other participants posts and leave a comment. Because we don’t have any rules, it is your choice. We hate rules. We love memes, however, and here is today’s meme!

Saturday 9: Just One Look

1. How vein are you about how you look?

Not very much

2. When you were little what was your favorite TV show?

I enjoyed a variety of tv shows, what is popping into my head now is Star Trek. Yes, I was a geek even when I was little.

3. If someone was going to make a movie or TV show about your life, who would play you and why?

Kathy Bates, because I think she is the only one who could play me right.

4. Who is your favorite Major League Baseball team? How about your favorite player?

passing on this question

5. What is your favorite baseball-related movie?

see answer to number four

6. What is one lesson you have learned in the past year?

to live a truthful life

7. Tell us about one of your childhood memories.

getting punched in the nose by the kid who took my brother’s bike and me chasing him all the way to his house so he could hide behind his mommy

8. How do you handle sticky situations? Do you have a method? If so, what is it?

I just tell the truth, now. Everyone involved just gets the truth.

9. Do you think people talk about you behind your back?

I am sure they do, and quite frankly I do not care.

Intellectually, I have always known that there is good anger and bad anger, however, emotionally any type of anger would cause me a great deal of anxiety. This would be true whether I was the one who was angry or if it was someone else. Learning how to deal with my anger and the anger of others appropriately has been a life long battle that I have only managed to get a little ahead of since I have been seeing my counselor.

A few things I have learned about anger is that good anger propels us into action and promotes growth. Bad anger is destructive and stifles growth. Good anger causes us to protect ourselves from harm, physical or mental. Bad anger causes harm.

Expressing anger appropriately is a freeing experience. That is part of what makes it good anger. People who can express their anger appropriately can let go of what made them angry in the first place and then move on. They feel less weighed down because they are not carrying a bunch of anger with them every where they go.

Bad anger is expressed in an out of control manner. It is often the result of not expressing ourselves when we are angry about something and it sits there and simmers, finally boiling over and taking out anyone in its line of fire. People who express their anger in this way have a hard time distinguishing between what is something that truly makes them angry and something that just irritates them. In both situations they react with the same out of control behavior.

When I was growing up, due to how things were in my family at that time, I did not express my anger very often. I did not speak up to the person that made me angry. My anger would just sit there, it took on a physical feeling. It literally felt as if the anger was just sitting in the pit of my stomach. It helped contribute to why I was a sad and angry teenager. I can remember going weeks and weeks without really talking to anyone, even in school, and then someone doing something to irritate me. I would then react horribly and say things that were not very nice.

Through my whole adult life I have done that same thing. Stuffing my anger into the pit of my stomach, with it only coming out in an uncontrolled manner. Soon all that anger and perceived wrongs that I was stuffing away, started seeping out. I became a very bitter and angry person. Apparently, it was even noticeable to people who did not know me well. I would often hear comments, like I needed to smile more, or how pretty I looked with a smile. I just could not manage to smile though, not with what I had boiling inside me.

This bad anger allowed me to see the world and the people in it as ugly things. It allowed me to keep people at least an arm length away from me. It contributed to the anger I felt towards my parents. Bad anger made it easy for me to be a negative person all the time.

This bad anger did not cause my depression, it was just one of the contributing factors. One of the ways in which my depression manifested itself was a very nasty, hair trigger temper. The anger I would feel would be considerably out of proportion to what actually triggered it. It was as if all that anger I had stuffed inside of me needed to be let out and I would pick the first handy target to take it out on.

With the aid of my counselor and my medications I have managed to let a lot of my anger go. Most of that anger that I have had boiling inside me for over 20 years, is gone. I feel lighter and freer than I can remember having felt. before. Unfortunately, when this anger starting going away and my anxiety lessened as well, I initially failed to see the balancing act I would need to maintain

I was so pleased at not dragging around all that bitterness and anger anymore, that I avoided feeling angery at all costs. Even when someone treated me disrespectfully. I would allow them to treat me in a way that I did not deserve and not say anything about it as a way to avoid getting angry.

The other day I finally got it. There is nothing wrong with feeling angry. It is a valid emotion. It is how we manage our anger that determines if it is going to be a good anger or a bad anger. If we choose to let it sit and boil and then come out in inappropriate ways we are not managing it very well and we have allowed it to become bad anger. However, if we take the time to express it in an appropriate way and release it, and not allow it to reside in us, we are managing our (good) anger well.

In what ways do you express your anger? Would you consider it good anger or bad anger? Is there anything you would like to change about your own anger management?

I wanted to share with ya’ll a really cool contest that is running on another blog. You can find it at Harriet and Friends. Harriet has challenged her fellow bloggers to make 1000 comments in the Month of March. The first one who gets to 1000 comments wins and the prize is a very cool blog button made by Harriet.

The rules are pretty simple, a few of them are listed here. For the complete list of rules please go to Harriet’s site.

Grab the Comment Challenge Button, you can see mine on the right hand side of my blog.
List your link on the linky
Post a comment on that page, that will get you started.
I am using a ticker from Ticker Factory to keep track of my amount of comments.

I really encourage ya’ll to check out the contest. I have met some really cool people hanging out at Harriet’s Place

I hope to see you there, Neighbors!

I really appreciate everyone’s kind words. We could not find a vet to take Rosie last night, however, my husband found a vet that would take her early this morning. I could not bear to go with him to the vet, but he stayed with Rosie until everything was over.

Now that I am more calm I can relay what happened yesterday that made it so we had to put her to sleep.

She was an old dog, 14 years old. She had been a great family dog. As big as she was she had always been good with the kids. When Anna was an infant and crawling, Rosie would stand over her and herd her through the house. She would let Anna crawl all over her and when she got tired of it she would just wander off to another place in the house. She did not bark much and was friendly with most people. The only time she seemed to get upset about people coming to the house, was if a strange man came to the house when my husband was not home. When she was younger she loved to play soccer with the kids. She loved tennis balls and would play fetch with them for hours. However, she enjoyed fetch so much that she would bring sticks, rocks, or almost anything to you for you to play fetch with her.

As she got older she developed the normal things that older dogs do. She was mostly blind and deaf. She also had pretty bad arthritis. My husband, Farrol, and I had begun having discussions on how much pain she was probably in and how we did not want her to suffer anymore. However, we never really decided on doing anything for sure.

Yesterday, our neighbor came down in his truck to pick Farrol and Anna up and take them to pick up Farrol’s new truck. Rosie has known our neighbor since he was a kid and she was a puppy. They liked it each other. It seems when our neighbor was backing up to leave, Rosie was behind his truck. Something she never has done before. We think she did not hear when he started his truck up and she was in his blind spot. When he backed up, one of his tires rolled over her back, pelvis, and her back legs. It was a horrible, horrible accident. The fact that Anna was there when it happened and for something like to happen in my own front yard, just made it worse. I have to admit that I was angry and sad last night.

I feel so bad for our neighbor, he is a young man that really cares about animals and he is very upset. My daughter has known Rosie her whole life and she is terribly upset as well. My son was the one who named her, and I have been trying to get a hold of him and let him know but I have not been able to reach him. He was six when we got her. My husband, who was never a dog person until I married him, is very upset as well.

I have spent the day mostly just goofing off. Deep breathing and using my new relaxation techniques to deal manage my stress,  anger and sadness. I am feeling much better now. Has horrible as things played out, she was in pain before the accident happened, so at least now she is feeling absolutely no pain anymore.

Thanks for listening, Neighbors.

A young Rosie with a young Anna

Our fourteen year old german shepherd has taken a sudden bad turn. We are going to have to put her to sleep. I think our town has an emergency vet, if so my husband will take her tonight. If not then he will take her first thing in the morning.

I knew this day was coming, but I am still extremely sad.