Sunday night I finally got up the courage to tell my roommate I won't be living with her next year. That's taken a load off my mind. As much as I don't relish the prospect of moving again, I am sure that it is the right decision.

So now it is time to start looking for a new place to live. Unfortunately, given that I have the lovely Zephyr, my living options are limited, and I probably will end up paying more next year than I'm paying this year. The places I can afford don't seem to be in the best neighborhoods. It would be awesome if I could find a nice place with a fenced-in backyard for Zephyr. I doubt I will be able to find anything like that that I can afford. But whatever I find, I am looking forward to it, and to the prospect of finally being at peace in my own home again.

A few days ago, someone told me that maybe my depression was caused by my diet.

I know she was trying to help, but I find that only slightly less insulting than Tom Cruise saying that depression is not a real illness and that it can be 'cured' by taking vitamins.

I was so flabbergasted that I couldn't say anything to her at the time. It was all I could do not to burst into tears.

What makes it worse is that this person has dealt with depression, so she should get that it's not just a matter of eating your fruits and vegetables. But maybe it's just my depression that's not a real illness; she clearly thinks hers is.

Depression is a real illness! My depression is a real illness! If you can't understand that, please, don't try to help. I'm better off without it.

Today I got my first marriage proposal. Well, kind of. She didn't ask me to marry her in so many words. That's right, she. She told me that I should become a man or clone myself as a man so we could get married.

This weekend was not too bad as far as staying on schedule. I finished the reading for three out of four classes tomorrow and both writing assignments for tomorrow. I'm behind in the reading for my PhD seminar, but that's to be expected. I wanted to get ahead in my Moral Theology class because then I wouldn't have to spend Wednesday doing two writing assignments for Thursday in addition to the readings. Getting ahead did not happen.

I looked up from my reading tonight and saw Zephyr curled up with his blanket on my bedroom floor. He has a bed, but it is right next to the windows, and it gets pretty drafty there in winter. I guess it's gotten so cold that even when I give him a blanket it's not enough.

For some reason, the image of a cold greyhound quietly curled up in on himself, not demanding anything more comfortable, really tugged at me. So I put down my work, spent a few minutes re-arranging the disorder in my room, and put his bed in a warmer spot. I sat next to his bed and motioned for him to get up off the floor and lie on the bed. He's spent the rest of the night contendedly sleeping on his bed. As I was typing, he let out a contented groan. Literally.

This makes me feel more accomplished than all the hours of work I've done this weekend.

Due to popular demand (for me, two people = popular), I will now explain the story behind my gluten-free diet.

I've visited Fr. Tom twice. Both times, he has sent me away with his latest theory on why I am so depressed. He really wants to find some explanation that we can deal with and cure or treat, especially because medications haven't always been very successful. I don't care that much about explanations; I'm not sure if that means I've come to terms with my depression or if it's just that after so long I've given up hope of any explanation or successful treatment. But Fr. Tom still wants an answer for me.

When I saw him last summer, he suggested that I get a CAT scan to see if I had a brain tumor. No brain tumor present. We were both disappointed.

So this time when I visited him, he suggested that maybe my depression was due to celiac disease, a disease in which the body is unable to process gluten, resulting in damage to the intestines. There is some evidence that celiac disease can be connected to certain psychological disorders, including depression. There is no cure for celiac, but it can be successfully managed with a gluten-free diet.

In spite of my love for pasta, I decided to go on this diet just because Fr. Tom seemed so hopeful that this might be the answer. This shocked Danielle, especially because I thought that Coldstone probably wouldn't be safe for me to eat anymore.

Anyway, I went home armed with Fr. Tom's hypothesis and Google in an effort to find out about celiac. I'd promised Fr. Tom that I would try the gluten-free diet. Last Friday, I went to get a blood test to see if it could tell me whether or not I had celiac. From Friday night onward, I started my new gluten-free life. Yesterday my test results came back and said that I did not have celiac disease.

I was disappointed at first, because I would like it if there were some explanation and successful treatment for my depression, but then as I left the doctor's office I thought of all the foods I can eat again: pancakes, pasta, sandwiches, chocolate, cake, brownies, and so much more. I thought of how much easier it is to go to a restaurant when you don't have a problem with gluten. I started to get more excited and immediately went to Subway to get a sandwich with real bread.

Once again, Fr. Tom is quite disappointed. He says that he keeps coming up with all these great theories and I just keep debunking them. If Fr. Tom keeps up with his pattern of a new theory every visit, I sincerely hope that the next time I visit him he does not think electro-shock therapy or a lobotomy is the answer.

Day one on my gluten-free diet has been hard, mainly because I can't eat any of the chocolate I have at home. The gluten-free chocolate bars are over $2, and that's more than I'm willing to pay. As far as I can tell, my chocolate chips are okay, so I might have to eat those. And Nutella.

For the next two weeks at least, I'm also on a lactose-free diet. I'm still allowed to eat cheese and yogurt, though, which is good.

Anyway, today's breakfast consisted of a banana.

I had some gluten-free gingersnap cookies for a snack.

I decided I should actually eat a real dinner. So currently I am baking a pizza on gluten-free dough with black olives, Roma tomatoes, basil, oregano, and garlic. I hope it will be good.

I may have to invest in some gluten-free bread mix and actually start baking, because I can't find any gluten-free bread.

Gluten-free food is very expensive. So I think I'll be aiming to eat more naturally gluten-free foods, like vegetables, fruits, and meats. That will be good for me anyway.

Yesterday was my first day of the new semester. I had class from 8:15-4:45 with only one real break. To make matters worse, I had no sleep the night before. Oddly enough, instead of feeling too tired to function, I mostly just felt like crying a lot.

Today some of my textbooks finally arrived from Amazon. I also went to the Notre Dame bookstore to pick up books I'd ordered there and to buy some notebooks. I came out with those plus a book of 50 questions on the natural law and Why Humanae Vitae was Right. Not that I'll have time to read them, but I want to be able to have them to consult. I'm taking an ethics course, and we'll be covering natural law, so it will be good to have a quick resource at hand. I've had a lot of people ask me recently how NFP is morally different from contraception. I have an answer that satisfies me, but I'd like to be able to say more about it. Both books could shed light on that. I'd also like to learn more about when it is appropriate to use NFP to avoid pregnancy from an expert faithful to Humanae Vitae, because I've heard such a broad range of opinions from other faithful Catholics who are as uninformed as I am.

I'm anticipating starting a gluten-free diet this weekend, but that's a story for another post.

You know who your good friends are when you tell them that your dog sometimes barks when you yawn loudly and then proceed to demonstrate it. The best friends are those who not only allow you to make a fool of yourself while you make yawning noises at your dog, but join in with their own loud yawning noises.

I was supposed to visit Fr. Tom today. That didn't happen due to the snow we're experiencing. I knew the roads were hazardous, but I fully intended to go anyway. I'm not very careful with my own physical safety.

As my brother and I were packing up the car, I got a call from Fr. Tom. He sounded like he was about to deliver bad news; I knew what he was going to say. He was talking about how bad the roads were and figuring out if we could work something else out, which is tricky because my classes start next week. He asked me what I wanted to do, and I told him I had planned on braving the hazardous roads and visiting him anyway. He said in a firm voice, "Don't do that." I said that if I were happier I'd probably be less eager to venture out. He said, "I know. I anticipated this conversation." He knows me too well.

Fr. Tom told me that I should take out any anger or frustration I feel about the canceled visit on my little brother. My brother was not very pleased by that suggestion.

It's nice how fatherly Fr. Tom is to me. I think he worries about me; he told me earlier that when I visit him I should pack blankets and food and water just in case something were to happen on the road. He told me not to come because of the roads, and then suggested that I not travel back to South Bend tomorrow because there will be a storm coming in there. I can't believe he actually looked that up! No one else (except my mom) consistently expresses so much concern about my driving safety. Of course, Fr. Tom is probably more aware than most people of my lack of concern for my own safety, so I bet he thinks he needs to watch out for me. Just like a dad.

Instead of visiting Fr. Tom, I spent the day sleeping, watching TV with my brother, and playing with Zephyr in the snow. For a dog with so little insulation, he really loves the snow; he spent quite a bit of time running around in the snow and running up to my brother and me and play bowing. It's great to see how fast Zephyr really is.

Just for fun today, I tried to register for e-Harmony and see if they would reject me or not. They rejected me. Apparently their program would be unable to match me and I do not fit into their personality profiles. That didn't really surprise me.

Still, this doesn't beat my worst online dating experience: being rejected by Jesus Christ on Facebook.

I have not posted in a while. Life has been busy. I drove out to see my mom's side of the family on Christmas Day. It was really good to see everyone. Then I went to see my dad, who's staying with his sister in Michigan. That was great. Zephyr was a bit uncomfortable at first, but by the end of the visit he was starting to settle in well. He was thrilled to get back home; I'm sorry I'm taking him away from here tomorrow. I'm going down to Champaign to drop him off, then up to West Chicago for a friend's wedding, then back down to Champaign for the rest of the week. Next Thursday I get to visit Fr. Tom. I am putting so many miles on my car this break.

Overall, I liked Christmas this year. I've had trouble getting in touch with the liturgical calendar this year, probably due in large part to being so sick throughout. So Christmas kind of came as a surprise, and Christmas Mass brought me up short in a good way. On Christmas day I got called by each of my two best friends. It made me feel very special that both of them took the time to call me on such a busy (and special) day.

Zephyr and Danielle and I took a tour of Notre Dame with some friends of ours. It was great, but Zephyr started shivering even with his coat on. Poor dog can't handle the weather. But Danielle got to see my building, Touchdown Jesus, the Dome, the outside of the Basilica (it was locked), the stadium, and the Grotto. It was great.

Danielle and I were drinking wine and watching House. Suddenly Danielle started asking Zephyr if he had drunk some of her wine. We didn't see any dog drool on the sides of the glass, but decided it was better to be safe than sorry. Especially when Danielle took her glass to the sink and Zephyr followed excitedly staring at the glass the whole way.

I didn't realize how good Zephyr has been for me until Danielle told me that I should never live without a dog again. It's the first time she's seen me as a dog owner, and she said she noticed a huge difference in me. It's good to have outside confirmation that getting a dog was a good idea.

Zephyr has begun to rip an ear off his elephant and has also taken off one of its legs. It needs to be sewn back together, probably by a sewing machine. When Danielle and I went to the pet store to pick up some more dog food for Zephyr, I found a monkey toy that's designed the same way as the elephant. I bought it for Zephyr. He loved it. Later that afternoon, I noticed that the seam on the back of the monkey had come apart. I felt bad taking away Zephyr's new toy. So I sewed it together again, but I didn't have any string. I used dental floss instead. It worked really well. Now Zephyr can play with his monkey again.

Danielle is here visiting me in South Bend. It's the greatest, most wonderful thing that's happened in a long time.

I am now done with my first semester of grad school. I would have been done yesterday, but I was too sick to take my final then, so I took it today.

I'd heard a lot of people tell me that the first semester of grad school is always really hard. I was quite worried about it, to be honest. Fortunately, however, and surprisingly, I didn't seem to have much of the first semester horrors that lots of other people do. I've been depressed, but not unusually so. If anything, at least the first month of the semester was better than usual. My classes were very challenging, and I definitely felt the stress of the workload, but it wasn't that much worse than my undergrad program (finally an intensive undergrad pays off!) I wish I hadn't been sick so much (I still haven't recovered from Thanksgiving's sickness), and the roommate situation could be better, but those issues could both have been a lot worse, and I don't really consider them part of the whole "first semester of grad school" difficulties I'd been told about. Moving to a new town was a challenge, but not nearly as much as I thought it would be. If anything, getting out of Champaign actually helped.

So overall, this semester was very challenging. It wasn't easy. I'm still struggling with my depression. But on the Christine scale of things, it was a good semester.

Darn steroids. They're necessary to treat my asthma, but they interfere with my antidepressants. Knowing that this is making my wood worse does not make it easier to deal with, especially because I also know that once something upsets the tenuous equilibrium of my drugs, it's not easy to get any sort of equilibrium back.

Part of my problem is that I don't have a lot of things by which to evaluate myself. I'm behind in schoolwork because I was sick, and am struggling to catch up knowing that I have several major things to get done within the next week. I feel like a bad student, especially because my thinking is definitely not up to par these days. I'm an introvert, so it takes me a long time to make friends, and hanging out with people is harder when I'm sick and miserable. So now I'm berating myself for my social inadequacy. I'm trying (and failing) to be a good roommate. I had to miss Zephyr's first training class because I was sick and exhausted, so now he'll be behind and it will be hard to catch up, and I start to feel like I'm not spending money wisely on him. So overall, it's hard to find anything in my life that makes me feel like a valuable person. I know that those thoughts are lies, but the grains of truth in them make them very hard to resist, especially when my biochemistry does not cooperate.

I know my value lies in God, but depression screws up my perception of Him, too, so my faith seems to be another accusation against me rather than a support in time of need. One more thing I'm not doing well, and with One who deserves the best from me.

My last final is next Tuesday. I have one week left. Approximately 20 pages to write in that week. I don't know if I can do it, but it needs to get done. After that, it's a break from work, but not a break from depression.

My car is currently running wonderfully. I have, however, finally figured out why it's had so many problems this semester. My licence plate is a variant of Athanasius's name, so by metonymy the car's unofficial name is Athanasius.

It wants to live up to its name, so it's trying to go into repeated exiles.

My roommate is interesting when I'm sick. The night she got home and heard I was sick, she gave me a vitamin C pill and a multivitamin (both of which I promptly threw up). She's offered to make soup, which is nice, although I haven't taken her up on the offer because I found out the hard way that chicken broth makes me want to throw up just because of its taste. She'd probably drive me to the ER if it comes to that.

The problem is, the one thing that's harder for me than anything else right now is getting Zephyr outside. Going up and down the stairs with a greyhound in tow really aggravates my asthma. I've mentioned this to my roommate, and she's heard me return from a walk hacking up my lungs, but it either doesn't occur to her that I'd need help or she just isn't willing to walk the dog. To be fair, I haven't asked her directly, but I think it would be a natural enough reaction to offer to take out the dog for someone whose asthma gets significantly worse every time they take him out. If that's not something she's willing to do on her own, I'm not going to ask her to. I've had a classmate offer to help out with walking Zephyr, but it would be weird having her do it when my roommate is right here. I'm pretty sure my roommate would rather drive me to the hospital than take Zephyr on a quick walk. Ironically, doing the latter would make the former less likely.

I'm seeing a doctor tomorrow. I'm feeling a lot better flu-wise, but whatever I had (the flu test was negative, but all the symptoms were flu symptoms) has really aggravated my asthma. My albuterol inhaler is not working for me, and albuterol inhalers have a history of not helping me when my asthma acts up.

Being sick is not much fun. I have a lot of free time because I'm too sick to go to Mass or go to school. Unfortunately, I can neither work nor relax during this free time because I'm too sick to sit up for more than 30 minutes and standing really hurts my back. I have no energy because I haven't been able to eat much. Since last Tuesday, I've probably eaten and digested less than I ought to be eating in one day.

I wanted to make it to class today, and I want to be there tomorrow, but right now that doesn't seem likely. I need to start being able to keep down food, reduce or eliminate asthma symptoms so I can walk more than 40 feet without getting winded, and then regain some strength.

At this point I don't know if I'm relieved that I only have three weeks to go or if I'm worried that I'll only have three weeks to catch up on what I missed.

This has been the worst Thanksgiving I've had in a very long time.

I was supposed to see my dad for the first time in over a year. I was really looking forward to it, but I got very sick and could not go. I have every symptom of the flu, but I do not actually have the flu. I haven't been able to keep food down for the past few days, so no great Thanksgiving meal for me. My fever has made me weak and miserable. I'm too sick to even sit at the computer for more than five minutes and work on the major paper I have due in less than a week. I think I'm going to beg the professor for an extension. I was grateful that at least it wasn't triggering asthma symptoms, but today my asthma began acting up again.

So this Thanksgiving has been spent being unproductive, physically miserable, and alone. But unfortunately the very annoying greyhound who lives with me seems oblivious to my woes and still needs to be taken outside.

Yesterday I signed Zephyr up for obedience classes. It should be a good bonding opportunity. Plus, it should help equalize our relationship. Currently, it is very unequal, as you can see from the following lists:

Things Zephyr does on command:
Come
Lie Down
Stop what he's doing

Things I do on 'command':
Feed Zephyr
Give Zephyr water
Take Zephyr outside
Pick up Zephyr's poop
Throw Zephyr's toys, as many times as he wants
Play tug of war
Give belly rubs
Give other forms of affection, such as itch-scratching, ear-scratching, or cooing