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Start your day with a monkey!

The guy was so close I could have touched him, if I hadn't been so busy taking pictures. Or was afraid of getting monkey rabies. Right after this picture, he ran to the beach and got into someone's backpack. Don't believe me? It, and almost all of my other Costa Rican photos are here. Yahoo photos is being a pain about recognizing rotated photos, so nothing I shot vertically is in it yet.

I did knit a little while I was there, mostly on the plane. I'm a mere 4 rows from finishing my coworker's computer lab gloves but I've been too busy to look at them. This is me knitting on them while we were caught up in a protest.
Two men were killed a few days before when they hit a pot hole while riding their motorcycle. After local authorities refused to do anything about it, they shut down the only road through town by parking cars perpendicular on the one lane bridge. The road was going to stay that way until higher officials got there and signed documentation that they would fix the road. We actually ended up back tracking out of there before it was all said and done, but when we left, officials were on their way with documents. It's a shame that two people had to die, but I love that the town organized and got what they wanted with peaceful protest. Can you imagine if that happened here? What if we shout down a major highway in protest of the war, which has killed so many more people than that Costa Rican pothole? Maybe I'm an optimist, or just really naive, but I like to think that sort of thing can still make a difference here. Yeah, maybe it's more naive.


This is me knitting a French wrap in the Costa Rican rainforest. Little did I know that I would be proposed to on this very same porch a few hours later.
The clapotis and I are stuck in the Bermuda triangle of knitting, the point of the triangle being: it doesn't seem to be getting bigger, the ball of yarn doesn't seem to be getting smaller, and I'm bored with he pattern. I haven't even finished the first increase section. But like most things I get bored with, I have to remember that the end will justify the means.

I sort of went off of my meds while on vacation, but the full effect of it didn't hit until I was at home. The last two days have been full of normal stress but made much worse by a panic attack and the crazy looping thoughts I get. They make it hard to sleep or focus on anything at all. I get a little weird and obsessive. I've always been a depressive and never got any treatment until I was on my own in college. Anti-depressants weren't terribly effective so I quit them and was untreated for a few more years. I finally went to see a real psychaitrist (the other anti depressants were perscribed by a GP) and got diagnosed with a mood disorder. I got some mood stabilizers and they seemed to help. I didn't know how much they helped until going without them. Then it's like, wow, I'm crazy, how did I live like this for, oh, 24 years?
[rant]
I know there's a lot of people out there with similar problems. I hope you find the strength to get help and realize you're not alone. I hate the stigma associated with mental health disorders. Pretty much everyone I know has been treated at one point. So to all you people who think "happy pills" make you fake or are a quick fix...they're not. They don't make me happy, they let me be who I am.
[/rant]