Read this

I just finished reading this book. It is a fantastic book. If you liked "Angela's Ashes" this is the American version. You'll hit every emotion. Laugh, cry, angry and happy. I really enjoyed it.

I'm having trouble sleeping anymore. I can fall asleep in an instant in front of the TV, but once I drag my butt to bed I'm wide awake. It's making me quite miserable. I tried taking Ambien, which makes me fall asleep pretty easily, but then I wake up between 3:28 and 4:25 am. That sucks. Oh, sure I could get up and go run. That does sound like a plan, but I don't feel like it. Maybe that's the Ambien still in my system or I'm just terrified of tripping over a cat and breaking my knee.

My weight seems to be holding (though the mind is not) I'm still walking and running. The days are definately getting shorter which is exciting because school and fall are around the corner. Which in turns means Halloween and blue jeans. Maybe that explains my miserable attitude. It's all about the weather. I hate summer. I could never live in Florida, Texas or anywhere in between. I live for fall, like winter (who doesn't like sledding) and spring rocks when winter has gone on too long. Summer just depresses me for some reason. I really feel like I start to lose it by August. I googled (love google) and I am not alone.

She also is careful about staying inside, a frustrating challenge, she says, because she considers herself an outdoors person. She first suspected a seasonal link to her depression in her 30's and became more attuned to it after she learned that she had a bipolar disorder around age 40. She said that she thought that it was the light more than the heat that affected her and that she felt frantic and depressed as spring ended.
''I actually feel kind of attacked by the sun,'' the designer said. ''I feel like it's piercing into me, and I start to feel more and more desperate to escape it. I have a hard time organizing and managing daily life. By August, I'm barely able to function and don't really recover until autumn.
''October is reliably a good month. I'm waking up, and I feel like I'm being released from my summer, what I would call, jail cell.'' (completlely understand what she is saying)

The cause may differ, as well. Seasonal depression in the winter seems linked to increases in the production of melatonin, a chemical that helps set the brain's daily rhythm, set off by the decrease in light.
But ''the seasonal trigger for the summer depression is less clear-cut,'' said Dr. Norman E. Rosenthal, a Washington psychiatrist and the author of ''Winter Blues.'' ''Conventionally, the thought has been that they are more sensitive to the heat. The question of whether it's too much heat or too much light has yet to be resolved.'' (I think it's the light. I know the sun is my migraine trigger, but I can NOT stand any sort of sunlight hitting my eyes. I always have a hat on in the sun...I actually put a Jim Beam Hat on the other day so I could walk to my neighbors house....yes that is the hat, Jim Beam and Nascar to boot, ugh)

This quote sums it up (w/ the exception of the reading) Anyone else feel this way?

My creative powers have been reduced to a restless indolence. I cannot be idle, yet I cannot seem to do anything either. I have no imagination, no more feeling for nature, and reading has become repugnant to me. When we are robbed of ourselves, we are robbed of everything!"Goethe