Dear Confused, Thanks so much for sharing these experiences here with all of us! Good for you for taking control and accomplishing so many tasks! Let your success today continue to guide your progress. Casey ___________________________________ The Depression Center Support Team

Hi all -- for those of you interested in reading a minor novella, I give you a scene from my life: Woke up tired this morning as I heard the garbage trucks rumbling along the main street -- the signal that they'll be on my street in about an hour. It's the 2nd of the month and I forgot to transfer money into the account that the mortgage payment comes out of -- another overdraught charge, sh#&. I look around my room and see the newspapers strewn around the floor and mixed with other papers and books I'd started reading at various times that are piled on the other half of my bed. Didn't put my clothes away last night either. What a sloth I am! I pull the covers over my head -- I want coffee, but it's too much effort to get up to make some. My daughter calls to ask if I will bring something to her downstairs, so I get out of bed. As I walk past the tv room, I see the mess all over the floor -- my eldest daughter is making a fairly intricate craft and pieces and tools are all over the floor. I should have been more firm with her about containing and organizing it -- at least then we would be able to walk on the floor! The front hall is another mess -- backpacks just left where they were first dropped, the swimming bag is still sitting there unpacked from last week (yuck!), costumes for tonight's play in a rumpled pile on the floor, shoes kicked all over the place -- and I don't even want to look at the kitchen! What am I doing to my children?! They're growing up without a sense of cleanliness and with a skewed sense of normal because I can't pull myself together! I haven't tidied up the sewing machine and mess after I finished the costumes 2 days ago and my mother is supposed to be coming over this afternoon to help me to fold and sort the enormous pile of clean laundry that has taken over the spare room. She's going to freak -- or worse: silently compare my housekeeping abilities with those of my Stepford-like sisters-in-law. I know, I know: I'm a disappointment. I look at the coffee-maker -- I should put the coffee on while I take the garbage out, and then it'll be ready by the time I'm done and I can start my day. But I just don't have the energy. I have to put out the garbage -- what'll the neighbours think if I don't? My next-door neighbour mu