Exploring Mt. Everest in slippers.

Toddler Talk.  The noises junior humans make as they create language pathways in the brain.  This week, I dipped into my meagre energy savings, and visited people I adore, that I'm proud of, and I'm lucky enough to somehow be family to, despite being related to none of them.  It's been a while since I've been around a toddler - I've got other family and friends with younglings; but toddlers are their own class of people. Small humans are as diverse and fascinating as any other group of people.  Yet they're harder to get to know.  A small person's vocabulary is still being filled with words, and a conversation is an exercise in patience.  Truly junior humans, are even harder, as their words are barely that.  With all of them, the trick seems to be giving them a gap long enough to figure out what they want to say.  Even the wee-est seems to understand that I don't   understand, and will try to find a different path of expression. Ma...

It's a standard question.  The answer, for everyone, is vague - for me there's a mental checklist going on; do you really want to know?  Are you being polite?  Is 'what I've been up to' appropriate for you to know?  Is 'what I've been up to' any of your business?  Will my answer seem pathetic?  The follow up to answers of 'not much', 'the usual', or even 'what did you hear?' defines what the person asking is really doing.  Are they checking up on a rumour?  'well, I heard ...', are they just asking to be polite? 'me either/too', are they looking to tell you what THEY've  been up to?  This is very common.  Or is it a simple conversational gambit, hoping to find a commonality to talk about? Or.  Are they trying to determine my mental health?  Is someone showing me they care?  It's hard for me to answer this question honestly.  Because a factual response of 'nothing', highlights that I still ha...

Christmas.  With Depression.  It can be done, it's just not easy. I've survived a few Christmases now, and it's been brutal every year.  On one hand, because it's a known time for triggers, and all the support services are bolstered, it's easier to survive.  On the other, well, it's Christmas - and every single trigger you can imagine, is out in force. Engaging in reality at Christmas is like being stuck out in a hail storm.  There's no escape.  Getting randomly struck by missiles that vary from a slight sting, to pulverizing.  There's no predicting the hail.  No way of knowing if I'll get through it relatively unscathed, or punishingly bruised and bleeding.  Turn on the radio, and I might get a song designed to make me think about starving children in Africa - it feeds the Depression with the knowledge that the world is full of suffering and there's nothing I can do about it, and my existence or lack of it is irrelevant to the problem;...