Weekend In Review

Walking down the hall to the bathroom I found myself with the overwhelming urge to pull the fire alarm in my building. I would love to go play hooky with Husband and enjoy some of this spring-like weather we’re having. Sitting at a coffee shop with him would be the perfect cure for this Monday. Alas, I have work to do.

This weekend I had two episodes of rage - small, in comparison, but debilitating, nonetheless. One Friday and one Saturday. After going so long without having these it was scary to have those thoughts again. Why does my brain think that stabbing my wrist with a fork (which I did NOT do, rest assured) would make the anguish better? Why do I have to scream things I don’t mean at Husband? Why aren’t the pills working?

I am monitoring myself closely now, allowing only for one more of these stupid outbursts to occur before I call the psychiatrist to move my standing appointment up. Having been on pills for so long, though, I do know that this is about the time when a medication will level off and you will see what dose you really need to be at. This thing isn’t a perfect science and it takes a lot of patience, but it’s hard to have that when you’re staring down the barrel of a loaded gun. (But not literally. We do  not own a gun and never will.)

Yet, I can tell that the medication did do something because once it was over it was really over. I took a xanax and a nap and forced myself out of the apartment to go see my nephew compete in the Lego Championship.  Watching a stage full of elementary school kids do the Dougie was edifying, not to mention cute as shit.

Sunday I took my nephew and nieces to the art museum. They are now all of the age where they can appreciate something as potentially boring as an art museum – even my four year old niece made it three whole hours before starting to ask that we leave “immediately”. It was really neat to share one of my passions with them. They are all little artists in one form or another at varying levels of skill and they were interested to see what works qualified as “real” art.

I proudly strolled them through the European art section, drooling over Degas and Rodin and some of the lesser known masters that I consider among my favorites. I was surprised to find them most interested by the abstract artists like Miro and Picasso (but everyone loves Picasso, really), my oldest niece claiming an interesting Jasper Johns piece as her favorite of all the things we saw. Though I hadn’t planned to take them there, we ended up in the Modern and Contemporary Art wing where they were fully submerged into the world of “Why the hell is this art?” There the youngest begged me to read the descriptions of the pieces that interested her, like the wall of mirrors with a small child and some stage lights on it and the one that captured all of us – a creepy sculpture of a pair of hairy child’s legs in wax in place of the handles of a faucet in an over sized sink.

Despite the fact that the parking garage raped my wallet (note to self, never use parking garage again) I was so happy to have been able to share that place with them. The Philadelphia Museum of Art was one of the first “real” art museums I ever went to and now it is theirs as well. I had been dreaming about that moment with them for years, biding my time until they were old enough to not get super bored by looking at pictures on the wall. Afterwards I took them all to Starbucks for little hot chocolates, rounding out doing all the things I love to do.

By the end of Sunday night – after a hearty helping of my sister’s chicken parmesan and a dance off with the nieces – I felt normal again. I felt like a part of my family, like a part of my life, which is so much better than a sad silent spectator. I hope that this means that the rages will be fleeting and not a worrisome sign of something in need of changing. I am hopeful, period, and that makes waking up on a Monday worth doing at all.