December Ups and Downs

I don't have much to show on here this month for a various reasons. Most of the swaps I did this month were ones that the kids and I could together. Doing swaps with the kids is fun, but it does produce a different kind of product, and since this blog was started to give me a place to talk about *MY* art, not my kid's art, I don't really like posting too many of our collaborative items on here. But it's all I've got at the moment, so...here's a picture is of the light that we made for a Solstice Light swap. My parents got a bunch of old glass insulators in a box of stuff from an auction this summer and they offered them to me. I wasn't sure exactly what I would do with them at that time, but I just had that *feeling* that they would eventually be useful, so I took a few. (And told them to keep the rest "just in case". lol I'm such a craft junk junkie.) Cameron (my 9 yo son) and I painted the insulator to look like sun and sky with bands of yellow orange, red, and blue, then added some cloud stickers to the blue lower part. Catherine, my two year old, strung the multicolored sparkly beads on elastic cord to fit in the grooves. Cute, but how to light it? I originally thought of creating a base to put the insulator on that would allow for air flow, but then I remembered that my husband had given me some electric candles about a year ago to use in my "fire dance" (which I did with my belly dance troupe) when I couldn't use real candles. I had an extra or two so I pulled out one of those and TA DA! No air needed. Kind of a silly project but we had fun.

The other reason I haven't posted on here in a while because my scanner is on the fritz. That really bites. ATCs really don't photograph well. I used to photograph all of my ATCs before I got the scanner and I was never satisfied with the resulting pics. The lighting was bad or the color was off or there was a glare that I couldn't get rid of...I hate going to back to it. Hopefully my husband can find the time to fix the scanner, but I'm not holding my breath. The work on our house is taking up pretty much all of his time as he tries to reach the deadline of moving in this June.

And then there's the third reason for not posting: DEPRESSION. I've had more trouble with depression this month than I have in a long time. I don't think I've had anything this *wearing* since the bout of postpartum depression I had after Cameron was born. The ppd I experienced after Catherine was born was milder and didn't really interfere with my daily functioning, which was a relief. After Cameron was born I experienced about six months of deeper depression during which I carried a Prozac prescription around in my purse and had to menatlly "check in" with myself several times a day to determine if it was bad enough to fill the prescription. (I never did.) That was followed by a couple of years of milder depression which didn't really end until he was 4 or so. After Catherine's birth I got to skip the serious stuff (maybe because I actually got to SLEEP when she was a baby!) and went straight to the milder version that lasted for a much shorter period. But this month was just plain difficult. I just felt BLAH, had no holiday spirit, and couldn't seem to find a place of balance. And then I got sick on top of that and everything sort of fell apart. Not seriously, but enough so that things like housekeeping are being affected. I pull it together every couple of weeks when I get a burst of energy, but it's just difficult to keep it up when a couple of days later all I want to do is sleep or escape into a fantasy world via books. The kids keep me going, but some days it's really, really hard to simply get up and MOVE. Once I do though, I can make it. The last couple of days have been a little better so I cut out the sugar and started exercising. I've been having small doses of caffeine though, which really affects me negatively when it comes to my mood, but I can't just cut myself off or I'll get migraines. I'm really feeling the effects of not getting enough sun too, but I'll just have to deal with that.