It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Today I had my first psychiatrist visit since my release from the hospital. He asked me some questions, went over my history, and concluded that yes, I'm still crazy. PHEW!!! I was worried there for a second! Actually, he didn't say it in so many words, but he did stick with the general consensus of depression and anxiety expressed through OCD. He asked about some of my OCD behaviors and even pointed out two compulsions I'd been acting on since I got into his office and hadn't realized I had been doing!

He wrote new prescriptions for my meds. He warned me not to drive after taking a Xanax because that does count as DUI and they'll haul my crazy butt to tent city. He mentioned that the dose of Zoloft I'm taking is fine for treating depression, but to work on my OCD I'd need a dose five times as high. I told him no thank you. I can still function in my day to day life, it doesn't really get in the way of things, and I feel that at this point, it's part of what makes me who I am. I think I'll keep those crazies around for a little longer.

I mentioned in my last post that I misplaced the pegs for the shelves in our bookcases. Someone asked me why I didn't want to just go get more. I replied that I just knew that as soon as we bought some the old ones would turn up. Well, we finally gave up searching and my husband drove out to Ikea to get the pegs.

Yeah. The bag with the old ones turned up within 24 hours. Anyone need some pegs for a Billy shelf?

Now that the shelves are up I'm able to get more decorations out. Before we moved we purged a lot of books from our collection. Now instead of having three shelves crammed end to end, top to bottom with a solid wall of books, as before, I have evenly spaced out books with room here and there for objets and plants. It's very nice.

I also busted out the Christmas decorations. I put a three foot tree on the table in the foyer and strung it with tiny white lights. I pulled out my ornament wreath from last year, fixed where some of the balls had fallen off, fluffed the bow, and hung that on the door that I spent an hour and a half cleaning after two people in one day mentioned how filthy it was. I pulled out this little stable I found at the Goodwill back in July for $2 and set it on the side table in the living room with some pieces from the Playmobil nativity set:

I don't put all the pieces out there because I don't think the boy can handle the responsibility of that yet. He'll get the baby Jesus on Christmas.

I came across my circle felt garland and put that on the tree in the foyer too. Then, just to amuse myself, I hung a bunch of Hello Kitty ornaments on it. I have some more of them around here too. At least I didn't do it on the pink aluminum tree - THAT would have been overkill. I need to find a pink glitter star for the top of this.

Here you can see a horribly lit photo of the finished shelves in the living room. I'm still trying to finalize the stuff on top, especially on the right shelf.

Here's a closeup of "the mantel." I doubled up a cheap garland that I probably got at Goodwill and fluffed it to make it look nice and full. I loosely added a strand of lights to it. There are two tall EO Brody vases in the back holding twigs for added height, and in the front, the latest acquisition to the collection - a set of seven lace edge dessert compotes. My friend Suzy has really been hooking me up lately with her fantastic auction finds of this stuff. I already had two - one (that was originally full of plastic Christmas flotsam) in this smaller size, and one the next size up. I took the seven that Suzy found and set them in front of the garland. Then I placed a large ornament in each. They're all different colors right now, but I think I'd like them to all match, or even just do two colors, like silver and blue or blue and red.

Finally, to finish it off, I think it needs some sort of small wreath above the compotes and between the branches. I'm going to think on that one some! Tomorrow night I'm doing the tree. I'm still on the fence about the decorations though, because some little man hasn't really been listening lately when you tell him not to touch stuff. I don't know if I'm up to doing the cookies again this year.