cranky pixels

Kaiser has interesting ideas about therapy, and by interesting I mean bad. Typical of an HMO, I suppose. Kaiser is the mother of all HMOs. They did the HMO thing before anyone else did, and they have this venerated older brother aura about them. And just like Big Brother, they have charts and graphs to tell them exactly how much care to dispense.

I met with a perfectly nice therapist, as far as that goes. She said “fuck” during our session, which I found endearing. I went through the quickie version of my spiel (which is still pretty long…the only way to expedite it would be to bring flow charts, and believe me, I’ve thought about it) and she dutifully took notes. The first hint I had that things were not quite right was when she started repeating back the bits she felt were relevant.

Me: …and then my brother died. I don’t know how to assimilate that into my daily life.
Her: So I hear you saying that you’re thinking a lot.

Still, I soldiered on because…well, I’d come all the way out there. And I want to be in therapy. I recognize that my inner child needs a babysitter. I am aware that there are things for me to get over, and I’d like to get over them.

Then she started to make suggestions. Crippling anxiety? Perhaps I should try deep breathing. I might be surprised by how calming it is. And – this is my favorite – if I find myself gorging on chocolate to assuage my depression, maybe I should just eat something else. Like something not made of chocolate. I could try that, right?

Feeling a little like I’d been offered band-aids for a broken neck, I asked how often the therapist would be wanting to see me. “Kaiser’s view of therapy is short-term and results-oriented,” she said. “We like to work toward a goal and see tangible improvement. I’ll give you a quiz now, to establish a baseline, and then after six or seven sessions we’ll give you the quiz again to see how much better you’re feeling.”

Right. I’m sure I’ll be all better in six sessions. I feel certain that my post-partum depression will be completely cured in a mere three months, assuming I remember to do my deep-breathing and “just say no” to sweets. Why didn’t I think of that?

For this, I got out of a warm bed. Seems counterintuitive, doesn’t it?

Now that Not So and I have a baby, a full-time job (him) and almost full-time school (me), it’s abundantly clear that we’ve been squandering valuable time with the whole “sleeping” thing. Time that could be used for a start-up. I look back on the lazy days when all we did was work and sleep and occasionally go out dancing and I say ha! Those days will never come again! Not in the forseeable future, anyway!

So far starting a business is much like playing office. When I was a kid, my father rented some office space in Redding to use as a photography studio; the back room still had desks and chairs that the previous tenant had left behind, and my brother and sister and I spent hours back there pretending to be secretaries. Given my subsequent secretary-ness, it was creepily prescient, but at the time – good fun!

Our current business venture is much like that. There’s really no pressure to get anything done, since Not So is keeping his day job and I’m home all day anyway, but I find myself wanting to work on it every free second I have – including when I ought to be sleeping. This is creating new and exciting adventures in insomnia. Happy Fun Baby and I slept until noon today – he was up most of the night doing his Rockettes routine, and I was up envisioning ways to market my design skills. Or maybe it was the other way around. You know how I love to high kick.

Now that I have something to occupy my brain, oddly enough, my depression has receded. Apparently it’s not idle hands that are the problem; it’s idle synapses. Either that or the Zoloft is finally doing its thing. Hard to say, really, and more to the point: who cares? I feel relatively good, and I certainly don’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth. (Disgusting saying, that. Also: poor horse.)

Site has lovely new theme (Tarski) and header (me). I keep pulling up the page just to admire my handiwork. The husband, he mocks.

I’m having issues with both WordPress and our server, though, and my issue is that they’re both too slow. I’m an instant gratification sort of girl, and not being able to access my site when I want to sets my teeth on edge. The server issue should be resolved relatively soon; it was hacked, and apparently still has emotional issues, but those are being worked out with therapy and the help of a new router. WordPress might be another story. I like the idea of WordPress. It’s all open-source and easy install and let’s be BFF, kay? And I want to be BFF, I do, but I also want my site to load quickly, and so far it isn’t happening.

I’m using version 2.0, and I guess there’s a 2.0.2, but the upgrade looks like it’ll be a bitch. Not that I handle that side of things; it’d be a bitch for Not So, and I don’t even know if upgrading would help. (Anyone with WordPress wisdom please weigh in on this.) I’ve considered switching to MovableType, but like I said, I want to love WordPress. And I love the way my site looks now, so I’m not eager to re-do it. We’ll see, though. One more day of constantly hitting the refresh key might change my mind.