Sugar Daddy: Your computer’s slow. Are you defragging your hard drive regularly?

Madhousewife: Well, I would, if I knew how to do that.

SD: I gots to learn you how to use a computer, woman.

Mad: No, I think the position you’ve taken is that I’m supposed to sit here and not know anything, and then when I tell you I don’t know anything, you can make fun of me.

SD: Well, that’s closer to the truth.

So I promised you all an update on my latest experiment with psychopharmacology, specifically the FocalinXR. The good news is that I don’t have to tangle with my insurance company anymore over these prescriptions because I am all done with these stimulants, forever. No offense to the FocalinXR, which I’m sure is an awesome wonder drug for people with ADD and ADHD–including adults–but it is apparently not doing much for my problem because at 5 mg I feel no difference, and at 10 mg I want to scream and cry all the time. So I think we’re over that. Yes. All done. Very good. Except for the part about me feeling like crap all the time. But that’s another story.

Speaking of another story, I was driving home the other night and “Working My Way Back to You” by the Four Seasons came on the radio, and I started crying. Why? How should I know? It was disturbing, though. (Not quite as disturbing as that time in 1997 when I wept all the way through a Celine Dion song. Yes, I listened to the whole thing! That was the disturbing part!) But still, an obvious sign that I’m in a fragile emotional state.

And mental, too, because I woke up yesterday morning and couldn’t quite force myself out of bed, and so I was staring at my Joe Cool pajamas and realized for the first time that Snoopy wears his sunglasses with the stems under his ears. And I thought, “That just can’t be comfortable. It’s bugging me just looking at them.” So I stopped looking at them, of course, but it still bugged me. I mean, the more I thought about it, I supposed it made some sense–according to Charles Schulz, Snoopy’s ears are very strong; they keep him balanced on top of his dog house, you know. Well, that’s what he said! And it’s true that I don’t have dog ears, so how would I really know whether or not it’s comfortable to have sunglasses tucked under them or not? And yet, it just didn’t seem right to me.

Okay, I’m off my FocalinXR and obviously not focalizing very well. Have I mentioned also that I’m not sleeping very much? That’s a side issue, though. I wasn’t going to go there. I was just thinking about the name “Focalin” and how lame most prescription drug names are. I mean, “Prozac”: “Pro” + “Zac.” “Pro” sounds okay; it suggests forward movement. “Zac,” on the other hand, just sounds like something you take for crazy. I don’t know why. Because Z is a crazy letter, I guess. It’s probably no coincidence that it figures prominently in the word “crazy.” So “Prozac” makes it sound like you’re moving toward crazy rather than away from it. “Effexor” is a little better; it sounds like “effective,” plus it has an X in it, and X is a letter with super powers. (Hello? X-Men?) “Zoloft” has “loft,” which suggests a lifting of the mood, and that kind of off-sets the unstable Z at the beginning. “Wellbutrin” is another anti-depressant, and obviously, it has the word “well” in it, and that’s self-explanatory, but what kind of suffix is “butrin”? I can’t even begin to think of where one would get that from.

So my psychiatrist and I were making small talk about the lameness of drug brand names, and she thought the lamest one was “Abilify.” I said I actually liked the sound of “Abilify.” I think I like it because it doesn’t even attempt to be subtle. “Right now, you are unable, but this drug will ABILIFY you!” She said Abilify was next on her list of drugs for me to try, right after “Geodon.” Seriously, what the hell? “Geodon”? That’s like…a rock. And I guess I’ll be STEADY AS A ROCK after taking “Geodon.” Part of me still thinks there’s a market for something called “SuperHappyFun Pill,” but no one asked me.

Speaking of names and no one asking, I’ve never understood why people show so little imagination when naming streets. How many “Main” and “Southridge” and “Hilldale” and other boring street names are out there? If I was in charge of naming streets, I’d have some fun with it. My husband and I used to talk about building neighborhoods and naming the streets thematically. There could be a Math neighborhood, and it would have streets like “Parabola Place” and “Tangent Terrace.” “X-Axis” and “Y-Axis” could intersect in the middle. You could also have a Grammar neighborhood. Wouldn’t it be cool to say you lived on “Dangling Participle”? That would make it a somewhat dysfunctional grammar neighborhood, but you get the picture.

Seriously, though, the more I think about it, the more I like this “Abilify” drug–just the idea of it, I mean. Because you could have so much fun with the ad campaign. Your slogan could be “Abilify me!”

“Gosh, Fred, you’re looking well these days. What’s you secret? Exercise? New diet?”

“Nah, Zeke–I’ve just been ABILIFIED!”

Before:

After:



ABILIFIED!

But first I have to ROCK MY WORLD with GEODON!

Stay tuned, gentle readers. Happy weekend to you.