No light at the end of the tunnel

Thanks for nothing.

This is how this post was supposed to start:

A cozy winter’s night: Here I sit at my writing table with a mug of green tea, a small honey bear squeeze of sweetness to it. Tina Turner’s greatest hits plays, her strong and gravelly voice pumping soulful energy into the room and I am writing by the light of my Zadro Sunlight 365, a contraption which promises 10,000 LUX of “Artificial Sunlight 365 Days a Year."

Then I was going to go into how I taped the iPod-sized gadget to the wall and how it is casting its blue glow down on me as I write and how it all feels very X-Files-y.

Instead it will start like this:

Little mother fucker didn’t work.

It turned on for a second and then nothing. Temper-fucking-tantrum-time. (Hey, I'm not using this thing 'cuz I'm such a stable person.) My frustration morphed into rage so quickly that I actually punched the dainty little four-inch piece of crap. I’ve also been known to throw an occasional punch at my laptop screen when it’s running so slowly that I could walk to the fucking library and take out 10 books on the subject I’m trying to Google before the goddamned page loads. I’m not proud of the fact that I fist fight with technology but until I hear of a support group for such a problem (You hear me, Oprah?), I’m going to declare myself the founder of a new trendy version of rage display…like Fight Club or wife beating.

I shouldn’t be making a joke like that…the fact that my Zadro failed me is really no laughing matter. (Doesn’t Zadro sound like that Genie from Big or the name of a Harry Potter themed vibrator---Would it be shaped like a broom or a wand?)

I’ve toyed with the idea of getting one of these therapeutic light boxes (resisting huge urge to make box joke) for a while. Seasonal Affective Disorder kicks my ass around this time every year. SAD is far too irritating and cutesy to describe its mass of cranky, dry-knuckled sufferers. I’d much prefer ASS---Another Snow, Sucka! (Runners up for that joke included DICK Dreary Ice Cicle (weather) Kills and FUCK Frozen Us Can’t Kope but they both felt like a stretch.)

So, SAD---it’s real. I should be spending these months in a cave somewhere. I don’t necessarily get depressed and, in fact, am not depressed right now, but it zaps me of energy such that 7pm starts seeming like a reasonable bedtime. (Battling fatigue is a war I’ve been waging for a couple of years now. I’ll devote another entry to how I arrived at my no-gluten lifestyle as a result of this after blaming everything from birth control-induced menopause to poor “sleep hygiene”---which means bad sleeping habits, not that my pillow is a lice hotel. I also had a secret theory that it was lymphoma but Dan just laughed at that.)

The cold weather doesn’t make me that grouchy (though when I came in last night I did say to Dan, “It’s so cold out, I could cut a bitch”) but the lack of sun and daylight hours shuts me down. I once heard someone refer to it as her “winter slip” which sounds like someone’s annual tradition of sleeping with a co-worker after the company Christmas party.

So, on Monday night when I got home at 5:30 and wanted to drop my coat and immediately crawl into bed, I knew I had to do something. I spent a couple of hours playing on the computer, staring out blankly into the nothingness and researching light boxes (still resisting…). Putting a sun in my living room is pricey---at least $200 for a good one—which is a high price to pay since I’m not sure if it will work. (Plus, I’m considering investing in a dawn simulator. It’s an alarm clock/light unit that’s set up so that a bright light turns on gradually---starting at 5am if you want to wake up at 6am, for instance---so that you’re waking up naturally to a simulated sunrise. People have noted mood improvements and less fatigue as a result of waking up “naturally” like this. Makes sense, right?) So, I opted for the $40 Zadro because most of the reviews said that it was just as effective as the larger units and I thought it was a good place to start. I even chose two-day delivery---that’s the kind of desperate I’m talking. I’ve been tracking the package since it left the warehouse yesterday and I ran outside coatless to grab the box after the UPS guy dropped it late this afternoon.

Then I broke out the laptop, made my tea, turned on some Tina and was ready to get a good hour of artificial light. I plugged it in---nearly blinded myself despite all the warnings to not look directly at it while turning it on---and now we’re back to the beginning, aren’t we?

Little mother fucker didn’t work.

I’m not sure if I’m going to exchange it, go for a better one, or even buy the dawn simulator instead. (The struggle there is Dan; he might enjoy the sun rising precisely when it does.) Still, it’s a bummer. I had high hopes for the Zadro.

One gushing woman even said it helped her so much that she nicknamed it the “magic box”---which, coincidentally, was my nickname in high school. (Fresh out of restraint.)

P.S. Dan’s trying to bring “that was my nickname in high school” back to “that’s what she said” popularity. I’m doing my part.