spoiledcat_77

As of today, Wax's annual vacation is now fully over without us having accomplished anything (from our long list of house repair and renovating tasks) because we still haven't emerged from depression-anxiety-exhaustion since last fall.

Wax feels much worse than me, but it would not be fair to say I've recovered from it. I have enough energy to want to accomplish a project or go for a walk but not enough to start these things on my own (it takes about 1/2 as many spoons to do them together) and enough to want to see my friends but not enough to go beyond texting one of them once a month or so.

Anyway, Wax thinks she might have a thyroid issue. Or another physical issue, but the point is, she suspects she's not just depressed or burnt out. But her employer switched healthcare providers six months ago and the new one doesn't have a local branch, so going to an appointment will mean going into Turku (25-35 min drive). Her exhaustion is therefore holding her back from seeking treatment for it.

And I guess I also feel kinda bad. I am going to have to try to meet a new GP and discuss my medications and stuff. Sometimes, though, I think what I need (not instead of medication, just like... need most) is really a rigidly-scheduled regimen of eating enough calories and sleeping and exercising to gradually increase endurance at the same time every day, but as an ADHD sufferer, I can no more make myself do those than make myself suddenly speak Finnish fluently. It feels like there should be a trick - like it shouldn't be this hard to just create routines. Or leave the house alone to go for a walk. And yet.

I am fascinated by reading antique magazines and the fiction published in them, and I don't want to imply that I'm not enjoying it, but... sometimes it's very hard to sympathize with the wealthy, or even the upper middle class.

Of course I'm used to literature being by and for the wealthy further back in history, and I don't say that I read about them without class consciousness, but somehow it's not as hard when it's from the 19th century or earlier. Maybe it's just that it's longer ago, or maybe it's because the society is more alien to me and harder to view through a personal lens.

But with these American upper middle class magazines from 1900-1940... well, the middle class was exploding in size and not all fiction or nonfiction was by and for the wealthy!

It's disorienting reading things about "every American girl" or "every new bride" in the 1920s that actually mean every American debutante. All four of my great-grandmothers got married in America around that time and none of them were worried about cruise ships and couture hats. (One was a nurse, one was a schoolteacher, one was a farmer's daughter and a farmer's wife, and one was a daughter of servants, from a big Catholic family.)

My tolerance for the wealthy perspective in fiction and nonfiction is lower the closer it gets to the present. I always have to overcome a strong impulse of disbelief that you're supposed to seriously sympathize with the idle rich, or people with maids, or the sphere where only people from recognizable New England families "count". Of course those people exist, but this is a big circulation women's magazine! Where are the average middle class women? The average middle class housewife was not a former debutante in 1908! But Woman's Home Companion could easily give the impression that she was. (Maybe there was a competing magazine that was preferred by the working middle classes. I'll try to find out.)