It is Day 2 of my vacation and I have decided I would like to be a stay-at-home mom even though my only child turned 18 last week. I took the career path instead of the stay-at-home mom path and it is among the biggest mistakes I have made in my life – which is really saying something because I have made a lot of really big mistakes. Really big.

I have always had “issues” with work. When I was 14 I got my first “real” job – the kind with a paycheck instead of $2/hour baby sitting some snotty nose kids. I handed out towels and baskets and cleaned locker rooms at the community swimming pool. I unwittingly broke the child labor laws when I took a second job at an ice cream parlor when I was 16. (How was I supposed to know that kids couldn’t work that many hours a week?)

In college I washed dishes in the cafeteria and stacked books in the library. I taught kids how to swim and saved others from drowning. My first job out of college was as a cashier at a fruit market. In 1981 I got my first journalism job, which paid a whopping annual salary of $9,800.

Alcohol is my drug of choice – work is my second. I self-medicated my depression and bipolar for decades with drugs, alcohol and work. Alcohol alleviated the physical symptoms for a few brief hours – then made my depression and mania much, much worse. Work fertilized my denial – I can’t possibly be a drunk if I never miss a day of work and win all these awards, right?

I beat myself up: “You will feel good about yourself if you work harder.” I never felt better so I kept working harder. Then I had my daughter. I went back to work when she was only 6 weeks old. I worked even harder to get my work done so I could get home to my daughter. When I got home I worked even harder to be the perfect mommy – I cooked, cleaned, sung lullabies, cut the grass, washed the …

My daughter gave me the gift that was at the top of my list: A bird feeder – and 10 lbs. of “deluxe mix” bird food. I think she thought it was kind of lame. She’s 18 and her idea of a gift comes in a turquoise box. But she has no idea what she really gave me.

My father was an alcoholic. Our relationship was, at its best, unemotional. He never raised a hand or his voice. Sarcasm was his weapon. Still, he embarrassed me. He didn’t provide for our family in the way I thought he should. He was incapable of sharing his feelings. I never saw him hold my mother’s hand or put his arm around her or give her the kind of hug I thought he should. I don’t remember him ever being romantic. It was as though physical affection was painful and emotional intimacy was excruciating.

But my father was a good father. He did the very best he could. I know that now – seven years after his death. There were two things that my father was passionate about: our dog and keeping squirrels off the bird feeder. Our kitchen table looked out over the backyard. He had set a bird feeder on a pole about 10 feet outside the windows. It was great watching the cardinals and sparrows and blue jays visit while eating breakfast.

My dad would sit for an hour or so, drink coffee, read the paper, watch the birds and cuss the squirrels – which sent the dog into a frenzy. It got to the point where we couldn’t even say the word “squirrel” without the dog going nuts. So we referred to squirrels as s-q-u’s.

My dad became the MacGyver of squirrel repellant devices. My favorite was a foot-long piece of rainspout with the sharp edges peeled back like a banana. He ran the pole holding the bird feeder through the mangled rain spout, which he had suspended from the bottom of the bird feeder with some of mom’s clothesline.

I think the idea was that the dangling, mangled rain spout would act like squirrel shrapnel – shredding the …

I had a discussion a couple of days ago with someone who was convinced that Tiger Woods is not a sex addict. He’s just a really rich guy who can afford to get as much of “it” as he wants and so he does – at least 16 “affairs” over five years of marriage isn’t pathological, it’s just a guy who wants to get laid – a lot.

I argued that it is not fair to compare Tiger Woods to other philandering notables: A-Rod, Michael Jordan, Wade Boggs, Patrick Ewing, Frank Gifford, Princess Diana, David Letterman, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford and on and on…

Why? Because these folks had affairs that lasted for longer periods of time and involved actual affection. They had affairs involving ONE other person (that we know of). They did not involve at least a dozen women over a five year marriage – spread out all over the globe with not intention of affection. Big difference. Tiger is in another league of philanderers – right up there with Eliot Spitzer and Bill Clinton. These guys have “issues.” These guys may have “impulse control disorder.” These guys are in it for the risk as much as the you-know-what.

The discussion went back and forth until I asked: “What do you know about sexual compulsion? Have you done any research on it?” He hadn’t. He did not know the symptoms, the behaviors or the progression of sexual compulsion – he was just speaking as a guy who watches a lot of sports.

I know sexual addiction is not in the DSM…yet. But where is the line between “boys being boys” and pathological philandering? Heck, I don’t know but it’s out there somewhere. It’s out there for any addiction – behavioral or substance. But how many pairs of Stuart Weitzman makes you a shopping addict? How many pulls of a slot machine make a gambling addict? How many trysts makes you a sex addict?

I don’t think it is that easy. Diagnosis involves more than just numbers. It involves a lot of what YOU cannot see. I know. I’m an alcoholic. It involves how much time we spend …

Have you ever noticed that the great holiday movie classics are about people with depression? What’s up with that?

George Bailey, the father with a passel of noisy kids in It’s a Wonderful Life tries to kill himself on Christmas Eve. The mom in Miracle on 34th Street is definitely not a happy woman (and Santa himself ends up in Bellevue Hospital.) Scrooge and Charlie Brown with his pathetic little tree. The Grinch definitely has some has kind of disorder. There’s Elvis singing Blue Christmas and that country song about the little boy who wants to buy his dying momma some shoes.

Enough already.

I don’t know what to make of this. They all have happy endings, too. (Except I think that kid’s momma died.) I wish I had a bumbling angel like Clarence, who would show me what the world have been like had I not been born, like he does for George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Clarence would swoop down when you’re depressed and feeling like the everyone would be better off without you, and show you what the world would be like had you not been born? I sometimes wonder what my life would be like had I not gotten sober. What would my daughter be like now? Would I still have a job? What would life be like now had I not surrendered and admitted I needed medication and therapy? What would I look like? Yikes.

I probably would be the female Scrooge. A real bee-otch and I would still be having those horrible dreams I used to have before I started therapy, my meds and got sober. I would be like that mom in Miracle on 34th Street and I would sit on my pity pot like a self-absorbed Charlie Brown and ruin everyone else’s Christmas like The Grinch.

I guess I don’t need Clarence. Tonight I am glad I was born and made it this far. In the words of George Bailey, I am “the richest girl in town.”

My Christmas tree has no lights. According to an article in the paper this morning, there is a Christmas light shortage. We have been to many, many stores but there are no lights.

I have never had a tree without lights. Actually, it doesn’t have any ornaments either because I have been waiting to put the lights on before decorating it. At first I was upset about there being no lights. I mean, come on, Christmas comes the same time every year. You would think the Christmas tree light makers would have figured out the supply and demand thing by now.

There was a time, before I quit drinking and was treated for depression and bipolar, that a dark tree would have put me over the edge. Seriously. It was exactly things like a Christmas light shortage that would have had me frantically calling every store that might ever have sold a light bulb and finally getting on line and paying an arm and leg to have lights shipped to me overnight.

But, there she is, my $60 Christmas tree, listing in a dark corner of my living room. Naked. I’m taking it as an omen or divine intervention or a stigmata or something. Maybe there is a lesson in this. Last week I was pretty uptight about not being in the Christmas spirit. I had made a decision to take Christmas down a notch this year and was feeling guilty about my decision.

But as I sit here writing, with my dog curled up under my desk and my naked Christmas tree in the corner, I’m feeling pretty good about Christmas and myself. A year ago I was having such a rough time that my nurse practitioner had to adjust my meds. Life is weird.

The cool thing about my naked tree is that it has shown me the progress that I have made. All those little baby steps I have been taking over the last few years just seemed like little baby steps until something happens – like a Christmas light shortage – and I don’t freak out. This …

Expectations are premeditated disappointments.

I stopped in my tracks the first time I heard this. Whoa. Let me think about this a minute. Four words. Wow. I could chalk up most of the disappointments in my life to just four words. I expected a lot – especially during the holidays. I expected my (now ex-) husband to read my mind and know what I wanted under the tree. I expected him to behave like those guys in the sappy diamond commercials.

I expected myself to be calm and happy and look swell in a apron as I opened the oven door and pulled out a tray of sugar cookies that I would decorate with a frosting gun and cleverly display on plates that I would lovingly give to my friends and neighbors, who had already received my Christmas card: “How does she do it?” they would ask. I expected myself to do all this while still working 40 hours a week, going to the gym and doing the laundry.

Most of all, I expected YOU to appreciate every damn sprinkle on every damn cookie, every freakin’ ornament I strategically placed on every freakin’ bough of that tree, every bow I tied, candle I lit and stocking I hung.  Dammit. Genuflect before me, St. Christine, martyr of working moms during the holiday season.

Expectations are premeditated disappointments.

No sh#!%t.

No Christmas cards this year. I will buy cookies at the store. I will happily sit and watch my daughter and her boyfriend decorate the tree without advice from me on proper light and ornament placement. I won’t expect a little turquoise box from my husband because there is no husband, no more.

Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Is it wrong for me to expect at least one present under the tree with my name on it? Is it wrong for me to expect you to acknowledge my hard work? Am I a bad person to expect someone, somewhere to remember that …

The annual holiday home tour is tonight in my neighborhood. I’m not going. Someone from the committee called me earlier this week and asked if I would bake cookies for the dessert table. “No,” just popped out of my mouth. Normally, I volunteer without a second thought, then I smack myself upside the head: D’oh!

I have been working on setting boundaries for several years. I am not very good at it, which is why I shocked the heck out of myself when I heard my “No.” No explanation. Just “no” – as a complete sentence. I think I shocked the woman on the other end of the phone, too.

We’re supposed to be full of goodwill this time of year and I am. But too much goodwill on my part makes me resentful and angry.  (Besides, I haven’t made a good batch of Christmas cookie in 30 years – when my sister and I made anatomically correct gingerbread boys and girls.) I have to take the holidays in small bites. Some folks can cannonball right into the holidays. Not me. Not anymore.

The instant I feel stressed about the holidays, I stop. Yesterday I decorated the house. I am a single mother of an almost-18-year-old daughter, who prefers to spend her Saturdays with her boyfriend rather than her mother. No more baking Christmas cookies together, making a gingerbread house, going to see Santa at the mall. She’s all grown up. So, I decorated the house alone.

Didn’t take long before my brain was telling me that I was a pathetic twice divorced, middle-aged, single woman who will go to the midnight Christmas Eve service by herself and wake up Christmas morning to a dog’s cold wet nose. I unpacked my cut of the Christmas ornaments, which my mother divvied up before she and dad died. I miss them so much during the holidays. Whoa. I knew where I was headed. By the end of the day I would be alone, under the covers in a fetal position, feeling sorry for myself.

So I stopped decorating. My …

The mother of the man accused of killing little 6-year-old Makayla Sitton said her son, Paul Michael Merhige, recently purchased two guns. She said her son had a mental breakdown when he was 19-years-old and has suffered from severe depression and obsessive compulsive disorder since then. Among the drugs he had been prescribed: Ativan, an anti-anxiety benzo, and Seroquel, an antipsychotic used to treat depression, bipolar and schizophrenia – which worked well for me.

She also said this:

“A person with a history of mental problems should not be able to get a gun,” she said. “This is such a big country. Why isn’t there a database of mentally ill people?”

Actually, there is a database of mentally ill  people and a federal law that prohibits gun sales to people who have been declared mentally ill by a court. But neither the database nor the law would have prevented Merhige from buying a gun.

There are loopholes. What if you are mentally ill and come from a family that can afford to send you to a private hospital, treatment center, take care of you at home or pay your rent? You have a history of suicide attempts and violence but you never enter the court system because your family protects you from the law.

Or, what if you have been involuntarily committed but your state does not enter your case in the FBI’s database? The law only works if the clerks of court report your commitment to the state law enforcement agency that enters your name into the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System database. Gun dealers must consult the database before selling a gun.

That law has been on the books since federal lawmakers passed the 1969 Gun Control Act. The FBI’s NICS database was created in 1994 to collect and store names of ineligible buyers. But many states don’t bother to report mental health commitments. Only 22 states were reporting in 2007, when Seung Hui Cho bought a gun and killed 32 people at Virginia Tech. A judge had found …

Something horrible happened here on Thanksgiving night. I heard about it when I walked into the newsroom on Friday morning. As the day wore on every snippet of new information was more horrific – leaving the crew of veteran reporters and editors in our newsroom shaking their heads.

In nearly 30 years of journalism – much of it as a beat reporter covering crime – I have covered many horrific crimes. This case is among the worst. Frankly, I don’t want to recount the details.

Of the four people and one unborn child executed that night, one haunts me: 6-year-old Makayla Sitton, shot five times, including her head and heart, as she slept in her bed – just hours before her premier as a ballerina in The Nutcracker. Makayla was the only child of beloved local television photojournalist Jim Sitton and his wife Muriel. Jim was trying to break into his daughter’s bedroom window when he heard the shots. Makayla’s mother, Muriel Sitton, who had served the family Thanksgiving dinner earlier, was also there.

They tried to revive their only daughter. The paramedics tried, too. Makayla died. As of Sunday night, Jim Sitton was still wearing the clothes he wore when he held his dying daughter – his left shirt sleeve speckled with blood.

I am a single mom. I have one child – Kealy – and she is the love of my life, the center of my universe and a gift beyond my wildest dreams. Like all parents I have had those horrible thoughts – what if…? Because I am a reporter and have interviewed and listened to the testimony of many parents who have lost their children, I have seen this anguish up close. It scares the hell out of me.

Three years ago, during my last major depression, I admitted that I had tried to kill myself twice before as a teen and was now thinking again killing myself. The only thing stopping me was my daughter. She was my anchor to life. I believed I had no reason to live without her.

“Anything happens to …

As of 12:01 am EST today, the holidays began in my house. Before that time I do now allow anything Christmas in my house – no lights, no lists and no music – especially that chipper Feliz Navidad song the plays over and over and over in my head like some kind of Guantanamo torture technique.

Don’t get me wrong – I love the holidays. I love everything about the holidays. I just hate what the holidays do to me – and I am not talking about my love handles. I get too happy and I cry. I get nostalgic and I cry. I get lonely and I cry. I miss my parents and I cry. I read The Littlest Angel and I cry. I watch those diamond commercials with some guy giving his girlfriend a big honkin’ rock and I sob.

I don’t feel sorry for myself. I simply feel TOO MUCH. There are too many feelings and they are too strong. I get angry at the guy with the Porsche who takes up two parking spaces at the mall so I don’t ding his precious Porsche’s doors. I get annoyed by clerks who can’t  make change. I get anxious about getting my damn Christmas cards mailed. I get very sad because it is just me, my daughter, our dog and her bunny. No aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings or grandparents. Just the four of us.

I have heard it said that mental illness is a threefold disease: Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years. So if you know someone with a mental illness – and let’s not forget that alcoholism and addictions ARE MENTAL ILLNESSES – watch out for them. Find out what they are doing for Hanukkah or Christmas Eve. If they have no plans, invite them. Make sure they have at least one gift to open. Call them for no reason but to say “hello.” If you see they are isolating and withdrawing, check on them. You can’t imagine how frustrating it is for us. We know this is supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year. Believe me, we know.

Do what …