Can't believe this is my 100th post!

I realized earlier this week that I have posted 99 times since I began this blog in late April of 2015 which, according to google search, was 524 days ago. By the time I started writing I had already been in therapy for six months and really thought that I was on the other side of my invisible mountain of this depressive episode. Wow - was I naive and totally and completely wrong; however, today I think I am really headed in the right direction. I didn’t intend to be writing all of these many, many posts (which I really hope more than 3 people are reading) with stories and revelations about my life with such frequency. My life and thoughts never seemed that interesting to me and I assumed others would feel the same. I am learning that many of my feelings/emotional experiences are more universal (or at least more common) than I ever would have thought and that my stories are often more unique than I realized.  This brings me to the story of the shattered oven door.  

Earlier this week we celebrated the holiday of Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish new year), and my family and I were cooking for both our first night dinner and for a family gathering to follow the second night. Sunday morning, with the help of a wonderful friend who was visiting from out of town, I washed, cut and roasted more green beans, asparagus, eggplant, onions and bell peppers than my 30+ friends and family could eat (I am still brown-bagging the leftovers several days later). Luckily in this case I did not procrastinate and spent the hours roasting early in the morning. My twelve year old then took over the kitchen to create both dairy-free and sugar-free desserts for the family (these did not fair so well in the end) and my husband sweetly put up our dinner for that evening. All seemed to be going reasonably well - if you could ignore the state of the kitchen with a tween baker (suffice it to say I was already feeling pretty anxious after walking through the kitchen and crunching on the white sugar coating the floor) when Dan informed me that the handle that had been loose on the oven had actually fallen off. This is not what you want to hear any day. I promise. I walked up the stairs from the den and as I was standing there, Dan opened the oven (using the sides of the door to gently open it) in order to take out the dinner that was currently cooking since we felt we should probably turn the oven off. As he took out the butternut squash I watched in slow motion as the glass from the front door slid down and shattered to the floor (see photo).

Why am I writing about this, other than to show how unique my stories can be? Because I am proud of how I handled it. The old me would have been in tears OR angry at someone OR freaking out about the cost associated with replacing or repairing and the lack of dinner and the cleanup; however, what I did this week was grab my car keys (after snapping this photo and realizing how grateful I was that no one was hurt), run out to buy both takeout food and two pints of Ben and Jerry’s while laughing about it all with my younger daughter. We returned to the house, left the mess in the kitchen and had our holiday dinner on the floor of the den, sitting around a picnic blanket, eating hummus and pita out of styrofoam containers. The anxiety was there and I didn’t let it ruin my evening. After dinner Dan took care of the clean up while I did some much needed self care and took a hot bath. And today I can report that our oven is repaired and back in service with no permanent damage done!

Originally I was going to continue tonight writing about the account of my first ever drum circle bonfire, but that will have to wait until tomorrow or this weekend… stay tuned! I guess that means Post #101 is coming up soon!