1/9/08 

They say that moving is stressful. What they say is right. I wanted to move, I wanted this new house, I really did, but shortly after we moved in I fell into a paralyzing depression. Okay, some other things were happening, too: my closest friend here in Vermont moved away. My very best friend from high school, still a very special friend, is ill with melanoma. I applied for a day job, sure of getting it, and was turned down. Christmas was on the horizon - a holiday fraught with all it should be and used to be and doesn't seem to be anymore.

Embarrassingly, after my tremendous excitement at buying this new place, all I wanted was to go home --- home, that is,  to our old house. It got so bad for a while in December that, more than feeling blue or a little teary I simply couldn't stop crying.  Over the years I've fought off and on with depression, but this was something worse. So, instead of a talk-therapist -- my former first line of defense -- I called my doctor, who promptly put me on an antidepressant, and suggested that some talk-therapy might be a good idea as well. Now, about six weeks later, I am feeling incredibly better. The talk therapy has been helpful, no doubt, but I do attribute most of my better feeling to modern medicine. I don't think I've felt this normal in a long time. I don't feel remotely like crying, I'm way less irritable, I like my family better, and I'm laughing a lot, especially with my husband. The doctor said the medicine would "take the edge off" and it has indeed.

And...it's been a couple of months since we moved in. I love the new house, but it's been a huge adjustment. Within a few days after we moved in, we had some icy storms, then the snow began and didn't quit. We had snow piled up on our deck and peering in the windows at us. We were shoveling and snow-blowing our driveway every day, sometimes several times a day. On the plus side, my husband and son, avid downhill skiers, could go out the door and right onto the slope. And I got myself new cross-country skis and started exploring the hundreds of acres of woods around us. When the sun is out here, there's no place more beautiful: the skies are as deep and warm a blue as the sky out west. The loveliness of the mountain landscape fills my whole being.

My next step is to resume my dyeing work, abandoned for so long during this drama of the house and the move. My studio downstairs is just about set up, and what a place it is. Quiet and apart from the rest of the house, all mine. I spent time there yesterday working on plans for a katazome class I'll be teaching this summer. I work for a bit, then when I'm stuck,  I look out the window at the calming mountains and return to my work refreshed.

The new place is going to work out after all.