Oct. 11, 2007 - 18:45 MDT

TURN UP THE LIGHTS

The leaves are turning to gold here in town now, with some bronzes and reds mixed. Nothing like the big show in New England, but a show nonetheless.

That's to the good of course, but it presages oncoming winter. Which to me is and always has been a bummer.

SAD is a funny ailment, and the cause is cloaked in mystery. I can say for sure when SAD began to ride my shoulders, when I began to come home from school to our house instead of staying with the neighbor lady 'til Mom and Dad came home from work. It worked pretty well for me, until fall fell. It wasn't all that bad and I found many diversions to keep me occupied, my reading of books accelerated for one thing. Yet the black dog followed me around.

I won't say I didn't have fun in the winter time, fun I had, but around the edges and going from place to place, especially when the weather was really cold and snowy that cowardly canine stalked me.

So SAD is nothing new to me, and if it gets too bad I can always get a new prescription for Wellbutrin. which in the past helped me much. But I jealously guard my drugless self (drugless from psychotherapic drugs) and feel somewhat snug most of the time.

With the falling of leaves comes early darkness, the sun beginning its southward tilt also. Consequently the lights are on here sooner and in more rooms of the house than most folks have them on. And if push comes to shove, I will get the plans and build me a light box which helps people with this ailment. And if that is what it takes, so be it. But, a light box in my den of iniquity has no place to roost without displacing things I want to be surrounded with. If necessary though room will be made for it.

'Tis an eerie thing this SAD, on the way home from a family gathering where joy abounded proceeding through the early dusk and cold, the black dog jumps up on the car waiting his opportunity to pounce, backing off when the warmth and snugness of home is in sight.

During this part of the year, life is still good for me and I find enough things to interest me and activities to take part in, that it is no real problem. I just automatically TURN UP THE LIGHTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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