Her royal majesty, Queen Marianne, freaked out this morning when her eyes opened.
At 6:45 I blew her a kiss, she blew one back, turned round to look out of the window and that was it: "Oh Daddy, we're deep in such shit!"
Clouds, rain and the extreme temperature change we'll all have to start regarding as normal with global warming and all.
"It's not the end of the world, love."
"But is is. The picnic, everything."
"Darling, not at this time in the morning!"
"Then you'll just have to wake up after I'm finished, because I haven't yet."
You've got it. She was off again to the Gare du Nord to meet the Boyfriend and had been counting on their second day out on the town to be out.
"We can't spend the whole day in the cinema!" she bleated, and I didn't tell her that after her last film with him and the failure even to look at the books and CDs in the FNAC I thought that what they did could be done anywhere, but probably preferably in.
She clambered down from her bunk looking as if a 19-hour maths lesson awaited her and curled up on the sofa pulling increasingly dismal faces.
"Love, you've got the whole of Paris at your feet. Improvise."
"How d'you want us to improvise?" she squawked, giving me her classic you're-such-a-moron look.
"Don't flip!"
"But of course I'm flipping, where do you think I get that from?"
"Not from me."
"You flip!"
"Only after the event. Never before. But your mother flips."
"No she doesn't."
"She used to. She did her flipping by getting insanely angry." (Those days are long since gone, dear reader.) "Take the map. Buy 'Pariscope'. There are a hundred things you can do, both of you."
"Like what?"
"If you shout at me, I'm not going to help you."
Anyway, she left 50 minutes later in the sunniest of moods.
In the neighbourhood, people have begun to ask after her because they never see her. We've had some great weather, but the Kid has only gone out with me for brief excursions.
If ever I'd forgotten what it's like to be a teenager who's discovering the other sex, I need no more reminding. I might regret buying her a superb Mac PowerBook last year. But I don't. With cable and a router, what she does with it is far cheaper than the 'phone bills we used to run up and -- on the rare occasions I'm allowed to see anything -- there are signs of much commendably creative activity, not just idle chat.
Since she won't even come to the Canteen any more, though, and has emptied the fridge and the cupboards (we had a "firm and frank exchange" yesterday about mess and about who does the shopping to fill them again), for Sam at the pizzeria and the shopkeepers who are still here, the Kid has become ... the mystery of the attic.
Her mum, Catherine, jestingly warned me on the 'phone that "they'll soon be sending round the DASS" (Fr., social security).
Well, I hope the Kid isn't going to prove as susceptible to the weather and the phases of the moon as your friendly Jekyll and Hyde correspondent, but I doubt it. Normally, she doesn't give a damn.
However, since I've not forgotten the people who drop in here for a bit of good news and bad about the Condition and my cyclothymia (that usually much more tolerable, lower-key version of the brutal blues Francesca -- "Why?" -- writes about sometimes) I'll tell you of a decision I made last week.
For once, I've completely ignored medical advice from both the workplace doctor, who unfortunately had nothing helpful to say early last week, and even from Bloghero Yang, who didn't agree with my own "why" of what had begun to -- excuse me -- mindfuck me badly. Far more than the petty hassles of being madly in love.
Each morning, I take a tried, tested and long-established drug which does no more, but happily no less, than regulate my serotonin (Wikipedia) production level.
Having previously written at length about this neurotransmitter, I'll spare you more, but now I'll say that every evening, around 9:00 pm and no later to avoid being totally wiped in the morning, I'm also supposed to take Anafranil (PSYWeb), the only anti-depressant the medical establishment has given me that I found acceptable.
This was until I went potty and began having horrible nausea attacks and started seeing two stories on the screen at the Factory when there was only one, if I could see anything because the words were a blur.
I told Dr Yang that this and other symptoms I'd got felt very much like some of the side-effects of Anafranil. He wasn't having it and blamed overwork, fatigue and emotional stress, asking me at least to go on taking it until I'd seen a mind pro. For two days I did.
Then I stopped, on Wednesday last week. For good, as it turns out.
By Sunday, I felt much better and it wasn't just the prospect of another week off. By the time this week got well under way, I could even sometimes think straight within half an hour of getting out of bed.
I will see the psychotherapist, eventually. Like lots of other people, she's decided that August is the month to go away and stop being a Parisian, member of that species so detested elsewhere in France (though I find most of them likeable and some loveable).
But I've decided, much as I did with alcohol in 1997, that during the first part of my life, my battered system has absorbed and rejected enough of the stuff to last me the rest of my days.
Until further notice, no anti-depressants. None.
It's not true for everybody, I know, it can't be -- that's a pity, and that's life -- but there are quite enough mysteries in my attic as it is without doubling the vision of them with chemical benders.
If I can do this throughout the hated, miserable winter as well, I'm going to settle for Seropram (Info on Depression) to do what my system doesn't because that's something I inherited.
And royal jelly.
I feel a bit like Ethan Hawke in Andrew Niccol's superb 'Gattaca' (1998). And I won't tell you who I'm reminded of by Uma Thurman, except to note that She who shall never again be mentioned here is prettier.
The second big wash of the morning is doing its thing in the bathroom, but contains none of the Kid's clothes. Despite my offers, she preferred to wash them herself, by hand, and hang them out to dry her way.
Now. Is that "normal" teenage behaviour? Please say "Yes". I have no worries about the state of her attic.
That reminds me of something I never did tell Zoe, who has also, coincidentally, been on about daughters' first boyfriends (not, so far, twats) this week. Her photographic evidence of the state of teenage bedrooms went down a treat at the Factory. Except that everybody competed to explain how much worse their own kids are.
You know what's wrong with this kind of blogging, Zoe? It makes for widening the generation gap. No wonder the not-so-little sweethearts rant on about being unable to trust us.
They're right.
10:33:12 AM link 
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