What's your secret pick-me-up?

[wishfulthinking]

Depends on what sort of 'down'.

Stressed out - unplugging the phone and curling up with a good book, some chocolate and green grapes (my fav).

Bummed out - get out the sad songs - my fav at the moment is "mad world" off the johnie darko soundtrack, don't know who by, but haven't heard it for months, so must must must get a copy of it somehow. I love going to the cinema by myself, and seeing cheezy movies like hollywood action movies, lots of guns. Shopping for sure!

Pissed off - walk, sunshine, that sort of thing. Lots of fresh air.

 

[The_Darkness]

Getting up when you're beaten down

I'm in North Dakota. I think this is as close to depressed as I've ever been. When I need a pick-me-up or even something to do, I either read (I'm chewing through a collection of Steven King and HP Lovecraft right now) I write (erotic, porn, science-fiction, or fantasy) I draw, or I watch movies. Driving also does a lot to lift my spirits, which is good considering it's so damn far from here to ANYWHERE else.

 

[Guest]

Sheeze,

North Dakota

I worked up at Grand Forks for a couple of weeks, All I can say is it would take lots of booze to keep me happy up there.

I feel your pain.

Jmt

 

[Svenskaflicka]

For coming back up, I'm with Svenskaflicka. Wilderness if it's available; working in my garden if it's not. Planting something is the act of an optimist, so they say, and it counters my natural, um, under-peppiness.

Also, there's no more direct way to get in touch with Nature than to dig your hands into it. You stand on all four, like an animal, you feel the dirt around your hands, and you are at once One With Nature.

It's as "grounding" as giving birth.

 

[shereads]

Also, there's no more direct way to get in touch with Nature than to dig your hands into it. You stand on all four, like an animal, you feel the dirt around your hands, and you are at once One With Nature.

It's as "grounding" as giving birth.

Until you prune the bougainvillea and it fights back, attacking you with its 1-inch needle-sharp thorns. The bougainvillea always wins, and is always larger when you give up than when you started pruning it.

To hell with nature, now that I think of it. I'm scheduling a hot oil foot massage and pedicure for tomorrow.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Depression is so much a part of my life now that my general pick me up is to reach for the pill bottle.

If it's just mildly being down, there is nothing like a long hot bath with Bach's harpsichord works playing on the stereo. The harpsichord is a strange instrument and somehow I can't keep myslef from grinning as I listen to all the strange notes it makes

If I am seriously down and the drugs aren't working I make the 21 hour drive back home to Mississippi. Nothing makes you feel better than mom babying you, even at my age

-Colly

 

[oggbashan]

I go for a walk beside the sea.

If I want a quick pick-me-up, I just glance out of any window to see the sea. Or I can stand on the balcony and look.

If I want a serious boost I drive ten miles, pay a toll to go on a private beach and I can walk for miles with only one or two dog walkers in view. (Except in school summer holidays - then I watch the tourists from my house)

Og

 

[Guest]

Reading a good book usually helps me. If I don't have a good book available, then losing myself in a mind-numbing video game works sometimes, or I soak for awhile in our whirlpool tub if it's after the kids bed time or hubby is at home. I can't go for walks since I have four kids to take care of.

I would love to be able to pick up the phone and call my best-friend, but she is thousands of miles away and I can't afford to call her everytime I get down in the dumps.

CM

 

[shereads]

I go for a walk beside the sea.

If I want a quick pick-me-up, I just glance out of any window to see the sea. Or I can stand on the balcony and look.

If I want a serious boost I drive ten miles, pay a toll to go on a private beach and I can walk for miles with only one or two dog walkers in view. (Except in school summer holidays - then I watch the tourists from my house)

Og

Now, that's my idea of heaven. If it were legal to walk my dog on the beach in Miami, I'd do that every weekend. I clean up after the dog, unlike the people who throw their used baby diapers in the water, so it doesn't seem fair.

 

[minsue]

Now, that's my idea of heaven. If it were legal to walk my dog on the beach in Miami, I'd do that every weekend. I clean up after the dog, unlike the people who throw their used baby diapers in the water, so it doesn't seem fair.

Put a diaper on the dog.

 

[oggbashan]

Now, that's my idea of heaven. If it were legal to walk my dog on the beach in Miami, I'd do that every weekend. I clean up after the dog, unlike the people who throw their used baby diapers in the water, so it doesn't seem fair.

I have seven miles of beach to choose from. Dogs are banned from only half a mile. We clean up as best we can after daughter's dogs but the tide does the rest. When I first moved here we used to send our untreated sewage straight into the sea down a short pipe. Now it is all treated inland and the cleaned water goes back into the water supply.

Did you know that water from a tap in London has probably been through five people before you drink it?

Og

 

[shereads]

Did you know that water from a tap in London has probably been through five people before you drink it?

Og

No, sweetheart. Before you drink it.



Twice in my pup's 12 years, she's been allowed to run leashless on an abandoned beach. In South Carolina, on one of the barrier islands, where a group of friends from college share a cabin each St. Patrick's Day weekend.

A city dog unleashed on a broad sandy beach at low tide on a cool day, with miles of nothing but uninterrupted running space and tidal pools to splash through, and sandpipers and gulls to run toward and scatter, is the very definition of "glee."

She would disappear up the beach until she was nothing but a black dot in the distance, and then run back toward me at top speed - her tongue not just hanging out of her mouth but swept back by the wind - her eyes wide and wild, and she'd pass me, running cheetah-style with her back feet seeming to reach in front of her body. Breathing so hard, she sounded like a little steam locomotive.

It was just at dawn, and we had been the first ones awake and the only ones to see the comet that was enormous in the night sky here that March, 8 or 9 years ago.

It was a perfect moment. One of those that makes us understand why we keep animals as companions.

They remind us that happiness can be attained simply and should be felt intensely.

Rant over.

 

[Svenskaflicka]

It's like the old saying. "Don't breathe in fresh air - you never know where it's been!"

 

[pop_54]

Hmmmmmmm

It's like the old saying. "Don't breathe in fresh air - you never know where it's been!"

And didn't you dad tell you, in winter, don't eat the green snow

 

[Svenskaflicka]

Noooo... I was only told not to eat the yellow snow, because yellow meant an animal had pissed there.

WTF do you feed your animals????

 

[pop_54]

Hmm

Noooo... I was only told not to eat the yellow snow, because yellow meant an animal had pissed there.

WTF do you feed your animals????

Grass.

 

[MathGirl]

It's like the old saying. "Don't breathe in fresh air - you never know where it's been!"

Dear Svenska,
There isn't much to be done about that. If you consider what happens to carbon dioxide, it's entirely possible that your next breath may contain carbon and/or oxygen atoms that were once a component of Julius Caesar's intestinal gas.
Ecologically,
MG

 

[The_Darkness]

Interesting thought and yet very very disturbing.

By the way, did you know that it was a illegal in Rome to fart in public? Under some of the Emperors (I think Caligula and Claudius, but I may be wrong) it was actually punishable by death.

 

[Lovepotion69]

I think I have far too many pick-me-ups. When I lived in London I used to head for the West End. I'd watch a movie or go to some musical. I'd also go eat in some restaurant at times.

When I'm not in that bad shape I used to spend hours in Borders. If I couldn't be bothered to spend money and needed to get the hell out of my flat in the evening I'd go clubbing. I really enjoy going to some bar/club and just watch people.

Otherwise, the haircut always works.

 

[shereads]

Interesting thought and yet very very disturbing.

By the way, did you know that it was a illegal in Rome to fart in public? Under some of the Emperors (I think Caligula and Claudius, but I may be wrong) it was actually punishable by death.

That seems fair.

 

[Ravishing]

When I'm down...

That all depends on the level of 'down ness' or 'depression' I've sunk into. If it's merely a Monday Blues, type of deal, then a Terry Pratchett book (Any one of his) will pick me up and get me smiling again.

Sadly, if it's the darker, despairing kind of down ness, I haven't yet found anything to 'cure' it as it were but to write. Usually, although that could be changed to 'always', poems. I don't claim that they are good, or even mediocre but writing it all out will usually lift the mood away.

Sometimes of cause, nothing works, and I'm simply stuck with it. But. Such is life, sometimes.