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Monthly Archives: July 2012

And So I Built A Fort

24 Tuesday Jul 2012

Posted by howdoyoupronouncethat in Things I think about

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Box, Chicago Bears, Fedex, Madonna, New York, Photograph, Queen, Stained glass

Around this time every summer, my depression wakes up, realizes I’m happy, and says, “Oh no, no, no, we simply cannot have that.”

It then proceeds to launch an attack of epic proportions.

For about 3-4 weeks every summer I feel no need to interact with the world, make pleasant conversation, get out of bed, eat anything but toast, or feel anything but miserable.

This happens every summer, so I can usually brace myself for the coming onslaught of despair, but this summer, I made the very, very bad decision to go on facebook when my depression was at its peak.

The problem with going on facebook when I’m depressed is that EVERYONE’S LIFE WILL BE BETTER THAN MINE AND THEY WILL HAVE THE PHOTOS TO PROVE IT.

Of course it’s not true that everyone’s life is better (at least I hope it’s not), but it still feels that way when I’m depressed and I only got 3 days of vacation for the entire summer.

And I used those 3 days to go to NY to run a 10k.

Foolish?

Quite.

Unfortunately, this time around my depression coincided with all of my friends going on vacation. Because they’re on vacation, loving life, and posting pictures on facebook, they don’t have time to call or text me, so I feel unloved and unappreciated.

Mind you if they dare to call me when I’m depressed I’ll most likely cry and then yell, “Leave me alone! Can’t you see I’m indisposed!!!!!”

It’s a vicious cycle.

Once July passes I’m usually back to my old relatively content self, but the weeks where I hate life and want to dramatically throw myself through a stained glass window with a picture of the Madonna and baby Jesus on it are intense.

It takes time and prayer, but I eventually get out of it and start finding happiness in the world again.

The reason why I’m boring you with this is so I can tell you about my fort.

In an effort to kick my depression in the butt and start feeling more like Gyasi and less like a waste of flesh, I built a fort.

It wasn’t a very beautiful fort, but it was my fort, and it had a sign on it that said, “The Queen is in.”

I was the Queen.

So let me tell you about my fort:

Next month my office is moving to a new location. If any of you have ever moved before you know what a long and complicated process it is. You also know that in an effort to move all of the things you have accumulated over the years, you will discover that you have accumulated too many things over the years and you will need to throw some of it out. When I moved from NY to FL I threw out about four garbage bags worth of stuff.  In the two weeks that we’ve been preparing to move, my coworkers and I have thrown out or shredded about ten garbage bags worth of stuff.

And we’ve still got another two weeks before moving day.

Lord help us.

Monday I was helping one of my coworkers clean out some files from her office and get them ready to go into storage. We had a great system going; she brought the files to my desk, I boxed them up, and then I put the boxes off to the side. When we started, I thought she would have 4 boxes max. She had about twelve boxes of files that needed to go into storage. My desk area isn’t that large. That’s part of the reason why we’re moving: nobody’s desk area is large. We need more space. Unfortunately, as I was boxing up her things, Fedex dropped off three boxes of documents.

A towering wall of boxes was forming around my desk.

And I was standing at the base of it ready to crumble.

I don’t handle stress well when I’m in a balanced state of mind; therefore, I was ready to fly off the handle in my emotionally compromised state of mind.

Cue the divine intervention.

“I should build a fort,” I said to no one in particular.

My desk is isolated from everyone else, so I often talk to myself.

“Yup, I’m definitely building a fort.”

Then I emailed Joanna and told her about my need for a fort.

Thankfully, she was supportive of my foolishness.

At 5:30, I turned off the phone, shut the office doors, called Joanna and said, “Fort” to which she replied, “I’m coming,” and started building my fort.

Joanna’s an interior design major, so she was necessary to the construction of my fort.

She was the reason my fort ended up with windows and a flag.

At 5:45, I stood back, looked at our handiwork, and thought for the first time in a long time that life wasn’t that bad.

It is true that I’m not jetsetting to Mumbai this week. Neither will I be going on a weekend getaway to Key Largo. It is highly unlikely that I will become a world-famous writer in two weeks. There’s a slim possibility that will get up tomorrow morning and find that I’m feeling 100% again. There’s an even slimmer possibility that I will wake up tomorrow and be the Queen of France with nary a care in the world. Yes, I know that France no longer has a monarchy.

Yes, I am also aware that royals have problems too.

However, I able to hope that I will feel better.

When the depression sets in I’m incapable of hope.

There is no end to the sadness, just a deeper level of sadness for me to wade through. When the depression gains momentum, it’s like a hurricane that blows through your front door, tears the pictures off the walls, hurls your couch out the window, and rips the floorboards off the floor. Nothing is where it should be and you don’t know how to put things back together again.

When I’m able to find hope again, it’s like putting the door back on the hinges, rolling up my sleeves, and being ready to tackle the mess.

So what is the moral of this story?

Perhaps when life is kicking your butt, you’re in a funk that you can’t get out of, you feel like every one else in the entire world is at a party and you’re stuck at home, or you just feel like you’re done with the world and want to get off, take five minutes and build a fort.

I’m not saying it’ll change your life, but things don’t seem so bleak when you have a fort.

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Guns, More Guns, A Water Buffalo, and Some More Guns

09 Monday Jul 2012

Posted by howdoyoupronouncethat in tomfoolery

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Bullet, Firearm, Gun, National Rifle Association, NRA, Recreation, Shooting, Shooting range

“Why don’t you come shooting with us this weekend?”

“I’m sorry have you met me?”

For the last month or so my friends, Hannah and Jason have been asking me to go to the shooting range with them. Like any other well-adjusted individual who grew up in a neighborhood with gang violence, I have a healthy fear of guns. I don’t care what the NRA says; people may kill people, but they use guns to do it. (I bet you we wouldn’t be nearly so keen to go to war if we had to fight with were well sharpened pomegranate. Let’s just be honest: guns are effective harbingers of death.) A sure-fire way (bad choice of words) to avoid being killed by a gun is to avoid places that have guns. You can’t get hit by the bullet if you’re not in its way. This is why I have avoided shooting ranges all of my life.

However, Hannah and Jason know me too well, so they know that if they ask me enough I’ll eventually cave.

“Come shooting with us.”

“No.”

“Come shooting with us.”

“No.”

“Come shooting with us.”

“No.”

“Please come shooting with us?”

“Ok, fine.”

So yesterday after church I drove to Shoot Straight on Southern Blvd.

(Before I continue, can we talk about the fact that I went to a shooting range after church? Even though I wasn’t shooting people or animals, I still feel as though I broke some unwritten commandment. Like “Thou shalt not shoot on a Sunday” was an alternate commandment in case one of the original ten didn’t make the cut.)

I got there a few minutes before Hannah and Jason, so I had no one to speak to about the giant bear that greeted me at the door of Shoot Straight. Yes, there was a giant stuffed bear in the lobby of Shoot Straight. There was a giant stuffed bear with a sign that said, “DO NOT TOUCH” on it; however, if someone puts a giant stuffed bear in your path, what else are you gonna do?

I’m not saying I touched the bear, but I’m not saying that I didn’t touch the bear.

About 3.5 seconds after I encountered the bear, I got around to looking at the walls of the Shoot Straight building. Apparently, the company is very keen on animals. There were water buffalo, deer, really big deer, a hippopotamus, various goats, and a bobcat throughout the store. Well, at least their heads were throughout the store. The company is only keen on DEAD animals. At least the goat got to keep its front legs. You see why I am correct in saying that guns are harbingers of death? Do you think any unaided human could have taken down a hippo with a well-sharpened piece of fruit?

Hannah and Jason got there a few minutes later and then we started signing forms, paying fees, and getting ear plugs. And when I say “we” I mean “they.” I was taking pictures.

Of all the death.

It took about fifteen minutes for us to get a space at the range, and when we walked into the range, I wondered why on earth I was walking into a place with not one, not two, but fourteen guns that were firing at a steady pace. Even though Shoot Straight is a very safe range, there were shells flying everywhere and when you’re not used to guns a shell is the same as a bullet. For the first five minutes I had to resist the urge to duck and cover.

Jason showed me how to safely load and shoot a gun. He owns a normal (as if I know what a normal sized gun looks like) handgun which doesn’t have a ton of recoil and is a good gun to shoot if you have a healthy fear of guns. After he emptied the clip, Hannah refilled it and then it was my turn. I put the magazine into the gun, took off the safety, aimed, and fired.

And promptly shot my target in the crotch.

Did I mention that we were shooting at zombies?

Shoot Straight has kitschy targets you can buy for $2.00.

We bought a round of zombies for everyone.

I fired my second shot and got the zombie right between the eyes. Then I got him in the chest, throat, the thumb (I’m a crack shot, right?), stomach, and leg. By the fifth shot, a strange feeling started to overcome my senses. With the sixth shot, it rose from my stomach to my chest. I started to feel all tingly in my legs and arms. With the eighth shot the feeling was in my head and my ears were warm and turning a slightly pinkish color.

Dear Lord, I was having fun.

That was happiness welling up inside of me.

With each shot I felt less like Gyasi and more like Rambo.

We both have curly hair, so all I would need to pull off the Rambo look would be twenty pounds of muscle and a bandana.

Perhaps it was the smoke, maybe it was the lead, or it could have even been the shell casing that ricocheted off the wall and burned me, but happiness somehow got a hold of me and I had a ridiculously fun time shooting guns on a Sunday. I now know why people go to the shooting range on a Sunday. You feel some kind of way about yourself after you’ve been shooting bullets at a target for an hour and a half. And it never gets boring. Oh no, in fact things get more fun when I get a bigger gun.

But the big gun scared me so all I could bring myself to do was look at it.

Baby steps, people, baby steps.

Do not take this blog post as an endorsement for guns. (Take the fact that I saw Congressman Allen West at the range as an endorsement for guns.) You know that I only write about things to make you laugh, dear reader, not to encourage you to do them. If anything, I encourage you to try something new this summer. I didn’t realize how much fun shooting bullets into a zombie could be until I tried it.

Although to be honest the sound of a gun firing still makes me skittish.

Spending the afternoon at the gun range was thrilling, but only confirmed my decision to never, ever own a gun.

Because despite the immense amount of safety precautions at Shoot Straight, guns are still freakin’ terrifying.

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