Look What Flew in Ahead of Hurricane Irene!

One of my friends, Deb in upstate NY, located the pink, plastic flamingos I so desperately wanted for my yard, so she sent them to me!  They arrived the day before Hurricane Irene lashed the east coast.

The box was wrapped in plain brown paper and when I unwrapped it, I laughed heartily at what was written on the box.

When my squeeze got in off the road that night, I eagerly pointed to the box on the table when he got home.  He was exhausted. He glanced at them and said, "What?" I held up the box so he could read what it said.  He  just groaned exasperatedly (not unlike the way he used to do in study hall), then suggested we put them outside that night, before the storm, and perhaps they'd blow away. Needless to say, they stayed safely in the house till the day after the hurricane when I proudly displayed them in the front yard.  He hasn't said anything about them....yet. The poor man is resigned to the fact that his girlfriend is definitely different.  

So the hurricane was at first expected to hit us very hard, with Buzzards Bay taking a punch.  The day before the storm was stinkin' hot and humid, and so, so still.  Earthquake weather.  Which is funny because we'd had that earthquake earlier in the week.  On Sunday the wind started picking up steadily all morning with quite a few huge gusts.  Lost power fairly early on, probably around 10:00 a.m.  Found out that the solar panels on the roof provided just enough juice to keep the fridge fairly cool/cold. And we were able to get one fan to limply push the warm, stuffy air around a little bit.  It rained off and on, but it was mostly just very windy.  I was curious enough to want to go out and take pictures, but also sane enough to stay put.  Pepper was very, very scared and had to have her anxiety pill.  My sweetie spent the day napping.  I do envy his ability to fall asleep so quickly and nap for hours.  I spent most of the day working on beaded cross stitch and reading, and when it got dark, I read by flashlight.  It was horrible to be without my beloved a/c.  The house got so stuffy and hot that we cracked all the windows and let the hurricane winds cool it off.  Everything died down by midnight and the stars even came out.  

The next day, Monday, was clear and cool.  A really beautiful day.  We went out to breakfast in Sandwich, and came home to a still-powerless house.  We put all the rapidly defrosting food into the cooler with ice bags. The squeeze offered to take me beachcombing but I didn't feel like being out in the sun when we couldn't come home to an air conditioned house. So I worked on, and finished, my beaded cross stitch project called "Mrs. Bones".  I have to start Mr. Bones next.

The love of my life spent the time asleep, and/or half asleep, in his recliner.  

We went out for an early dinner and the power was out through Buzzards Bay and Wareham.  The Evil Empire and Stop & Shop were closed, which means both stores lost thens of thousands of dollars in spoiled food and revenue.  Ended up at the Longhorn Steakhouse out in West Wareham, practically in Middleboro.  Power finally came back on at 11:00 p.m. that night, so we were out for about 30 hours.  It was such a relief to wake up to the a/c back on and blasting on me!! 

I have almost finished reading "The Help" By Kathryn Stockett.  I just saw the movie with my mom and I LOVED it.  She'd read the book first and said she preferred it to the movie.  I am loving both.  I highly recommend both book and movie.  It's a chick flick though, so I don't think many guys would think it as good as a woman would. It's very To Kill a Mockingbird-esque.  The movie was brilliantly cast and acted.  I found out later on that the actress who plays Miss Hilly, a character that you really love to hate, is the daughter of Ron Howard.  Clearly she inherited her father's talent.  The actress who plays the maid Aibileen, Viola Davis, has played a defense attorney in LO:SVU and played crooked cop Terry Randolph in the LOCI episode "Badge".  And Octavia Spencer is brilliant as Minny.

So I've been back less than 2 months and have already experienced a rare east coast earthquake and hurricane in the the same week.  I really have had MORE than my share of natural disasters in my life.  I can live without any further weather drama.  Still, it probably wouldn't hurt to pick up a generator this fall.

Contentment Reigns Supreme

Life in Buzzards Bay is very peaceful.

The sight of both our vehicles at home makes me beam with happiness.

The shed on the top of the hill is in pretty bad shape, but it's picturesque.  I've stored all the empty boxes in there and we'll see what happens this winter w/ the snowfall since there's an empty space where the window should be, on one side of it.

I was sitting on the back deck stairs one night earlier this month.  It was about 5:30 p.m.  I'd just gotten home from spending a lovely afternoon with my dear friend Martha (from college; we've been friends nearly 30 years), at her family's cottage in Dennisport. The weather was finally cool, with a nice breeze and there were big puffy clouds in the sky making cool patterns.  I could hear the train whistle, and I could also hear the ice cream truck music as it made it's nightly run through our neighborhood.  It was one of those perfect moments of peace and solitude.  

Queen Anne's Lace.  

I'm not good at botany, but my Facebook friends helped me identify this as Hosta.

No idea what this is, but possibly purple fringed orchid or some kind of fireweed.

Rose of Sharon tree on the side of the house.

Rose of Sharon.

Lilies in the front yard.

Doesn't it just scream out for a couple of pink flamingos?  

Pokeweed tree.

Pretty bowl of beach and bead treasures

Another bunch of beach and glass treasures.

Life is better than good, it's GREAT!

Official Residency Has It's Perks

I finally sucked it up and went to the Registry of Motor Vehicles in Plymouth to get my MA drivers license and plates for the car.  I was first in line when they opened and it took almost an hour to do all the paperwork, but I'm officially a resident now.

Which means as a Cape Codder, I can use this little known, residents-only shortcut.  lol  ;D

Much to our chagrin, there really is no alternate route for residents to get on and off the Cape.  There is no tunnel under the Canal.  We must use the 2 bridges just like everyone else.  But this postcard, and the accompanying "permit stickers", are a very popular souvenir item.

I plan on getting the smaller version of that sticker for whenever I get a new vehicle.

Oh Happy Day!!!!

I have been looking forward to a Papa Gino's pizza for a long, long time.  One of their restaurants opened in the Cape Cod Mall in the 70's, shortly after the Mall opened.  It's a local company that started in East Boston in the late 60's.  Their pizza has always been a fave of mine for as long as I can remember.  It's the most like NY style, and soooo GOOD!  The west coast knows nothing about making good pizza, except for The Rock in Washington. Back in high school and college,  my cousin Diane and I had a tradition of getting 2 slices, eating all but the outer edge of crust, then bringing the crust with us to the movies to nosh on, in lieu of popcorn.

'Back in the day', it was an eat-in or take-out place only.  When I moved back here, I assumed this was still true.  The closest Papa's to me is in E. Wareham and I don't feel like driving there in the late afternoon or early evening (not that it's far, I just don't feel like going out at that hour) so I figured I'll just stop there for lunch eventually.  One day, I mused somewhat forelornly on Facebook how I wished Papa's delivered.  One of my high school friends commented that they DO deliver!  I called them and....OH HAPPY DAY!!!!!!!

Nom nom nom nom

Happy Dance!!!!!!

Detoxing from Zoloft: A Diary from July 24 - August 18, 2011

July 24, 2011 

Back in 2003 after my dad died, I was sleeping a lot. A LOT.  I didn't want to go to work, I didn't want to make crafts, I was a zombie all day long, and when it was finally the weekend, I would sleep all afternoon on  both days.  I was in grief counseling and my dr. prescribed the anti-depressant, Effexor.  As time went on, I continued to take the Effexor, only because I knew that once you were on, you couldn't just stop taking them.  I found that out in 2006 when I was in Vancouver, BC and started to feel really weird.  Like I wasn't myself and I wasn't really aware of my surroundings, though I knew where I was, and things were just not right. My head felt disconnected from my body.  I was walking towards the Vancouver Lookout, trying to keep my grip on reality, when I realized that it was the 2nd day in a row that I'd forgotten to take my Effexor.  I remember going to the top of the Lookout and staying up there a good hour, just sitting at a table, looking at the view, summoning up the energy to walk back to the hotel and take my pill.  When I got there, I spent the rest of the afternoon inside the room, instead of out exploring.   Each new year seemed to bring another major stress issue anyway, which contributed to my tendencies toward depression.  In 2007, I asked my doctor to start weaning me off.  It did Not. Go. Well.  I was on a stepped down dose for a long time, but I was still extremely tearful, depressed and stressed.  The only bright spot I remember from that summer was my multi-day trip to Van Isle.  By the fall of 07, my doctor put me back on the full dose because of my failure to cope without them.

When Brian lost his job & our health insurance in 2008, I asked my dr. to switch me to a generic antidepressant because I was now going to have to pay full price for my scripts, and Effexor was out of my budget.  She changed me to Sertraline, which is the generic of Zoloft.  I've been on it since then.

Life has not been easy or kind over the last few years, but I have finally escaped it.  I am back home, albeit suffering through horrid heat and humidity.  I see my friends and family.  Everything is familiar.  I am in a very happy, committed and loving relationship.  I don't have to work.  I have all the down time I want to relax, watch TV, colour, make mix tapes, bead, read, shoot photos, go exploring and make a happy home for me and my man.  My breakneck-speed life has come to a complete halt.  In a nutshell, I don't have anything to stress out about anymore.  I don't have deadlines.  I don't have a commute.  I have the house to myself most of week.  I'm committed to living a no-conflict life, as stress-free as possible.  I know that for every upswing in life, the other shoe will drop eventually, because it ALWAYS does.  The one thing we can be certain of in life is that it's gonna change.

I've been pretty busy with the unpacking and errands, so I haven't had any kind of set routine like I used to, where I'd eat breakfast every morning and take my daily meds.  Ever since I moved out of the Washington house, I have gone a day or so w/o taking the antidepressants, I'd start to feel weird, and take one the next day.  But since moving to the house, I have been very, very lax about it simply because I forgot about them.  It occurred to me yesterday that it's been at least since last weekend that I took one.  That's a very dangerous thing to do, quit cold turkey like that.

When I left Washington, I had my prescription refilled for a 90 day supply.  That would give me 3 months to either find a new doctor to continue the script, or wean myself off by doing the half dose/every other day thing.  I want off them.  I'm sick of taking pills.

At this point, having been off them nearly a week, I don't think I should go back to taking them in any dose even for weaning purposes.  I'm closing in on 7 days without them.  I do notice some strange things like out of body dizziness from time to time, but they aren't as severe as the other times that I've forgotten to take them.  I attribute that to being able to be in an environment of which I am very much in control.  I have no responsibilities except pay the bills.  Yesterday (Saturday), late in the day, I did start to get that same feeling I had in Vancouver, BC back in '06.  I was dizzy, cold & felt detached, but I pushed through it.  I got very tearful at bedtime though, and that's because my squeeze had to go back out on the road after being home only 36 hours.  After being apart all this time, we finally spent 2 weeks solid together but now he's back at work and yes, it's very hard to say goodbye to him every week.

The tearful thing can and will snowball if I let it.  If I start thinking about Sagan, I start to cry.  I was watching/listiening to the 80's digital music station when "Time After Time" by Cyndi Lauper came on. I love that song, but the video was a tearjerker and that's all that I could think of so I had a good cry while listening to it.  I started to weep at the end of "Willie Wonka" yesterday afternoon too, when Willie gives Charlie the factory.  I've seen that movie HUNDREDS of times since I was a child and the scene has always made me cry, but yesterday I was surprised that it still hit me that hard, considering I haven't watched it in about 15 or more years.

Another thing that's been happening is that I've been having severe night sweats, but only from the waist down.  This has happened off and on over the past few years, but it had abated and I hadn't had this happen in a long time.  It could be the whole menopause process.  But I wake up every morning with my PJ pants soaked from the waistband down to my knees, and stuck to my cold, clammy, damp skin.

My dreams have been pretty bizarre too.  That's nothing new, because I've always had weird and memorable dreams.  These have been more strange than usual and stay with me all day.  Last night I dreamt I was going on a trip back to Victoria, but I was driving there via the mid-Cape Highway.  Next thing I was in the city, walking around the streets and shops I've come to know so well, but I was also going to walk to Willows Beach, which isn't within walking distance of downtown Victoria, in real life.

And earlier today I suffered from restlessness and boredom that's drove me crazy.  I felt like doing something, sort of, and was really bored, but couldn't seem to pull the trigger on doing anything.  I didn't have the attention span for a damn thing.  Not putting up pictures on the walls, not colouring, there was nothing on TV, it was too hot outside to take a walk or shoot photos.  I didn't feel like going over to mom's house.  I was bored with Facebook too.  I couldn't concentrate on my book.  I ended up flicking around the digital music channels on TV and singing loudly with every song I knew the words to.  Russell should be thankful he was on the road and missed my concert, especially since "You Should Be Dancin" by the Bee Gees was one of the songs I chose to listen, and sing, to.  I finally was able to get into a couple of episodes of  "Finding Bigfoot" on Animal Planet, as they were looking in Oregon and Washington so that managed to hold my attention for 2 hours and then the restlessness subsided.

What's making this detox process hard to discern is the fact that I am expecting PMS to throw things way off as well.  I don't know if my mood and the night sweats are related to the lack of the drug or PMS.  I do know that I'm not going to start taking the meds again, because like I said, I'm already almost 7 days into not having them at all, so I don't see the benefit of starting up with a half dose and then weaning off that.

I've decided to update this as I go along w/o the Zoloft, and publish this post after a few weeks, journal style, and see what happens.

July 25, 2011


Is insomnia part of this detox process too?  I  have always had trouble falling asleep, and staying asleep, but last night was particularly bad.  I went to bed at 10:15 and tossed and turned for a long time.  I looked at the clock at 11:50 and was awake for awhile after that. Then I woke up at 5:30.  I know I had weird dreams but can't remember them.  I was at the Registry of Motor Vehicles by 7:30 and was first in line to get my license, registration and title switched over to MA.  It took about an hour but I'm official.  License picture sucks; I  have that lovely "humid summer" shiny thing going on, on my cheeks and forehead but then again, who doesn't this time of year.  Went over to Sandwich and visited w/ mom.  Got back and finally bought a new cell phone. Been riding a bit of a euphoria wave today.  Found out that my fave pizza place, Papa Ginos, delivers, so I am doing a happy dance.  Gotta get my windshield replaced this week.  Wondering if and when I am going to experience a depressive crash this week, if at all.  Fingers crossed that it won't happen.

July 26, 2011


Still not sleeping, still weeping.  Am very sensitive to things and cry easily.  I try not to think about Sagan too much, as that's a trigger.  On the other hand, I'm really happy to be back.  I can't believe we left Washington a month ago today.  That was magic.  I am hesitant to use the word 'honeymoon' because we aren't married and we absolutely aren't getting married any time soon, but it was just that kind of trip.  I was pretty scared of how I was going to feel about being back east, and how homesick for Washington I would be.  I admit to being terrified that this move might not work out once I got here.  I got scared that I was going to miss Washington and the west coast so much that I would succumb to depression and melancholia, and need to be back there.  To my utter surprise, I am truly happy to be back.  Yeah I miss the cooler weather and the scenery, but I see the Cape and east through new eyes and I appreciate it more.  I've noticed that, if I can, I take the roads through the heart of Sandwich instead of taking the highway.  When I lived here prior to 1989, I was always jumping on the Highway, even to go the one exit from downtown Sandwich (Exit 2) to my high school (Exit 3), instead of taking Rte. 6A.  There really wasn't that much of a time savings by using the highway vs. the local road.  I love the neighborhood and the fact that I am so close to the water (Buttermilk Bay, Buzzards Bay and the Cape Cod Canal).  I have always loved the 3 bridges and they are close by too.  I'm digging all the old buildings and the buoy collections attached to them.  Talk about quaint.

August 8, 2011


Was doing really well till Mercury went retrograde so I've been a little out of sorts.  Friday afternoon I fell asleep in my chair while the TV was on. I HATE sleeping with the TV on.  I went into that awful stage of sleep paralysis where you are aware of what's going on around you but you can't move and it becomes terrifying.  I thought I was yelling 'Help Me' and was trying to reach for my squeeze's arm or hand, but I couldn't move.  I remember being able to see him (through my eyelids?  were my eyes open? was it just a dream?) in his recliner, watching TV, but I couldn't get his attention. Then I could have sworn Pepper climbed up on me for a pet and I was hugging and cuddling her like a stuffed toy. When I finally woke up 2 hours later, it had really affected me and my mood.  I asked him if I'd made any sound at all during my nap, if he heard me trying to say his name and he said I didn't make a peep the whole time, nor had I hugged Pepper.  I slept 12 hours that night, and had some uber strange dreams about having to take a college class in Paris (ick), but I ended up in very large but very dark and quiet bead shop.  The next day I was very much out of sorts and had that dizzy feeling in my head again.  But other than that, things are going very well.

August 18, 2011


So it's been just about a month today that I stopped taking the Zoloft.  Things are still going quite well and I no longer have any of the side affects experienced above.  I'm pretty proud of myself for getting off antidepressants by myself, but I would never, ever recommend that anyone try it without being under a doctor's care.  I took a chance doing it on my own but this was the perfect time to do it since I was in control of my environment.  It feels good to be free.

We Gonna Rock Down To

And then we'll take it higher.

The End of the Line

July 2 was our last day on the road.

I shed a few tears upon seeing this sign.  I never thought I'd see the day when I moved back.

Nothing to shoot pics of on the Mass Pike either, but by the time we got off at 495, and then 25, we were stuck in bumper to bumper 4th of July traffic going on Cape for the long weekend.

This is the train bridge in Buzzards Bay, that stays in the up position to allow boat and ship traffic through the Cape Cod Canal, but lowers to let the trains across.

Getting closer.

Sagamore Bridge in sight.

Welcome home to the Cape.  Sandwich is on the other side.

What an amazing journey and we had the best time.  I wish we could do it again!

A New York State of Mind

Only two more states left....

Vineyards in upstate New York.

The goal was to get to Albany by nightfall, having left Ohio early that morning.

It would have been fun to stop here too, since the one and only time I ever got to Niagara Falls was when I was 10.

These clouds reminded me of a DNA matrix

I've traveled the NY Thruway a couple of times and there is nothing, and I mean NOTHING interesting to shoot photos of.

President Eisenhower was the one who caused our interstate system to be built in the 1950's.  It's over 50 years later and they, along with the rest of our infrastructure, are deteriorating at an alarming rate.