I don't have SAD, I have MAD

I was beginning to wonder if I have Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) because this weather has got me crawling in the dumps.

But I don't have SAD. I'm sure of it. I have MAD.

I am mad because I hate snow.

I hate cold.

I hate that it takes twice as long to get anywhere.

I hate that a semi-truck, caught on a snowbank, almost rolled onto my car as I waited at a stoplight yesterday.

I hate wearing 20 layers -- and still being too cold.

I hate slush. I hate wet mittens.

I hate walking my dog when the wind and ice are cutting my face and my dog is pulling me in short bursts across icy sidewalks.

I hate not knowing how many new inches are going to be on the ground every morning when I wake up.

I hate not knowing when this is all going to end, but knowing that it is nowhere near soon.

See? I vented. I'm MAD, not sad.

The care and feeding of an aspie

Some people with Asperger's syndrome call themselves aspies. I think it is kind of a cute way of owning that you have been diagnosed with a mild form of austim.

My 11-year-old daughter has it, but she's never called herself an aspie. She's never really called herself anything because she doesn't like to talk about the diagnosis so much. She thinks the word "Asperger's" sounds like a bad-word sandwich, and she's right -- which is probably why "aspie" has caught on in the first place.

I have learned more about Asperger's in the past eight years than I have about anything else in my life. Still, no matter how much I learn and how much I read, there are no real answers. No one knows where it comes from or what causes it. From all the reading I've done, I know that there are tons of parents out there trying to figure out how to "manage" it by lessening its negatives and accentuating its positives. (For a brain disorder, it does have some nice features. Following rules without a fight comes to mind as a bonus.)

The one thing I can't figure out no matter how much I search is how to help my daughter make friends. No one has cracked that code yet for these kids. Either they don't care much about having friends (my daughter falls into this category) or they are desperately seeking friends, but put them off with the aspie odd behaviors and blunt assessments.

"Your breath stinks" is a perfectly acceptable conversation opener for an aspie. Doesn't get much more blunt than that.

Other kids don't get it and you know what? I don't blame them. Not one bit. If I was a kid with an aspie in my class, I probably wouldn't bother either. It takes a lot to be friends with someone who answers your questions only about half the time, rarely looks at you, never asks you how you are or what you want to do, and thinks a good conversation is recalling a verbatim dinner-table conversation from Thanksgiving three years ago.

I count my blessings that the kids around my daughter have been mostly understanding, but I say an extra thank you for something else: They haven't been cruel. At least not cruel enough to cause my daughter any pain or insecurity.

They just know she's different, even if they don't know why. They know she repeats herself a lot and can be a little rude. They think she's quiet; I'm quite sure some of them think of her as less than they are, even if they can't put it that way exactly. As a mom with the wisdom of childhood behind her, I see it and I know.

I always tell my daughter that I think she'll be very happy when she's an adult, and she can live her life to her own specifications. She'll be labled eccentric, I'm pretty sure of that. Maybe even be one of those odd ladies who lives in an apartment with five cats.

I hope she'll call herself an aspie and smile, even if it is just in her own mirror.

Wanted: One Phone Booth

While cell phones have certainly made pay phones unnecessary, I think there's one piece of equipment that goes along with pay phones that we still need -- phone booths. Let me explain.

I work in a cube farm. I would love for people to think that my glamorous job has me perched in a beautiful office with windows on two sides at Fourth and State with a stunning view of downtown.

I know that no one really thinks that. That's good, because here's the reality. I'm in a little box of a nondescript color with fabric walls. I think it was once beige, but two or three decades of exposure to florescent lighting has tinged it a little pink. It's kind of the color of Pepto Bismol, but not quite as bubble gum.

My window view is behind my back, and it's mostly a panorama of the old Arena, which I think is now called the U.S. Cellular Arena.

About 18 inches away from me is one of my co-workers. Good news: I like her. Bad news: We hear every breath the other one takes.

I know all the ins and outs of her personal life as she does with mine, both because we are friends and also because we can hear EVERY WORD the other one says.

At the farm, we're all in this situation, just in different pairs and combos. We are all on top of each other, monitoring each other's vitals.

Now with this picture painted for you, answer this: How do you call your gynecologist to ask about test results? How do you call the vet for antifungal cream for the dog -- and hope that no one else hears and assumes it is for you?

You grab your cell phone and head for the ... what? We have conference rooms that are used just about nonstop. As a result, you see a lot of people lurking in hallways, trying to have a semi-private conversation and hoping that no one comes by.

If someone does, you shuffle off to another little-used hallway, and again, hope for the best. Yeah, it usually doesn't work out. In fact, I almost always find myself heading down a hallway, just to find someone else there, crouched on the floor, talking on his cell phone. There's one guy in our farm who spends about a third of his day in the hallway.

There's one woman (not in my department) who I have heard talking on her cell phone in the bathroom stall on more than occasion. Ick.

If all of us farmers pooled our funds, we could probably get a phone booth or two pretty cheap. I'm going to check eBay.

And if I like them enough, maybe I'll wedge one into a corner with some windows and just move in.

Coolest kid in the world

The best thing about this story is that I know my son would do this for me.

Twist of Fate

It was a typical workday, rushing around, 10 things going on at once. Always trying to sneak in one last thing before dashing off to something else.

Today I was preparing some papers I needed for a 4 p.m. appointment and pretty fixated on whether or not I had everything with me when I left for the parking structure. I have a great job and I work in a great downtown location, but the down side is I have to park two blocks away in a parking garage.

In cold weather, I'm not digging it, but that's what I have to do, so I do it.

Anyway, I'm rushing out to get my car, head down on Fourth Street, watching for icy patches on the sidewalk.

All of sudden, my foot landed wrong on some sort of grate in the sidewalk and my ankle wrenched to the side. I stopped in my tracks, straightened out my foot, gingerly set it down on the pavement in front of me to make sure it wasn't going to be painful and then -- SPLAT!!! -- about two feet in front of me a huge glob of ice and snow landed on the sidewalk.

It had fallen from somewhere high above me. I was walking next to a six-story building, so I guess it could have been the roof or else one of the ledges on the higher floors.

I walked around it -- and then it dawned on me.

If I hadn't twisted my ankle, that mass from above would have landed on my head.

So there must be a little angel out there who twists people's ankles.

To that angel, I say thank you.

Let It Go

After several days of mind-numbing cold, the mercury hit 37 today. It is indeed a sad day when we are cheering for 37, but here I am and "hooray."

In the spirit of thawing, I decided to soften my heart toward the outdoors. It's been harsh to me, so I was giving it right back with attitude. But 37? I can work with that.

So I took the dog for a long walk and upon my return, decided to have a go at the ice-caked driveway with a strong, flat-edge shovel.

As I'm digging and chipping up little 4-inch pieces of ice and snow from the long driveway and pitching them up on the lawn, a woman walked by with a boxer on the end of her leash.

"Let it go," she said to me with just a hint of a laugh.

"I know, I should," I said. "I don't why I'm doing this."

"There is no point," she said, again with just a bit of a giggle in her voice.

Off she went.

I could have taken offense. After all, I'm trying to clear dangerous ice and snow from my driveway and sidewalk to help people like her who want to walk across it. I'm saving her from falling on her butt and being dragged for blocks by her dog while clawing the icy ground in an attempt to get up.

But she said it so kindly, almost like she was talking to an old lady cutting her grass with a scissors. What I was doing -- or more accurately put, trying to do -- was absurd.

I should let it go.

There is no point.

So I put my shovel away and went in.

Starting again

So this didn't go so well in 2007. My experiment, that is. I wanted to regain my interest in writing, try to find that elusive thing that I have lost. And in 2007, I didn't.

The end of the year is only weeks away. Christmas will be here next week, followed in short order by my 40th birthday.

I like the sound of being 40. It makes me feel -- maybe this is silly, I don't care -- finally grown up. Like someone who can make her own decisions without anyone questioning them because, after all, I did get to 40 years old, so I can't be that stupid.

Will 2008 be the year I get it back?

I went to a meeting last week for something I'm going to be helping out with at the high school and two strangers stopped me to tell me that they loved my column. They read it every week and loved it. I never know what to say in that situation.

Is it rude to say I got sick of it? Is it a lie? Kind of, yes, it is.

The truth is that for a variety of reasons, I contracted writer's block. A severe case. I gave up the column in 2004 and still haven't started writing again. I'd say that going on four years warrants the name "severe."

All of a sudden, I hit a wall. I wasn't sick of writing. I literally could not do it anymore.

I've always been one who finds life interesting, and all of sudden, and again, for a variety of reasons, I didn't find life interesting. In fact, when people would tell me that they had something interesting to share, I often felt dread. I knew I would not find it interesting, no matter what it was.

In writing the column, I wrote about my own life a lot, but I liked to share other people's stories too. But when you are bored with your own life and certain that no one else's is interesting either, what do you do with that? What on earth do you write about?

So I said "enough" and stopped.

The sad part is that I really miss it.

So this is my New Year's resolution for 2008. I'm going to sit here every few days and put words on this blog and see what happens. I've been limping along with this thing long enough. It's time to juice it up and see what happens.

Just might be interesting.