In Blue Jelly, Debby Bull writes of her efforts to pull herself out of a post-relationship depression through domestic achievement in general, and canning in particular. I read the book many years ago, I think in the early stages of my pregnancy with the Boy Wonder, and remember not thinking much of it at the time. I don't know what happened to my copy - given to a friend, perhaps, or donated or maybe sold on Half.com but in any case it's gone. Kind of wish I still had it, though, because that theme has been on my mind lately.

Looking back through my archives I see that I am most productive, canning-wise, when I am happy. The boiling water bath, the knife work, the slog of sterilizing and filling jars - it all serves to make me yet happier, to have an outlet for my mental and physical energies. I like the creative aspects, too. Thinking of new (to me, at least) uses for, say, pink grapefruit marmalade is fun. If happiness is a required state for me to fully express myself creatively - with canning as my primary medium and other domestic pursuits secondary - I think I've got a really good explanation for why we've been not so much on the canning around here.

It's said that realizing you have a problem is the first step to recovery. Let us then give three cheers for being conscious of what might just be sadness or what might be an actual depression. Last year at this time, Brainiac and I were trying to extricate ourselves from his graduate school, trying to get back to the Philadelphia area and just generally trying to salvage what was left of our sense of self after a rather poorly executed try at life in Charlottesville. I think we - or at least I - thought that once we got out of that house and back where we feel we belong everything else would just fall into place as if we'd never left. Of course, that could not possibly happen. You can't return to a life you've stepped out of, because that life no longer exists.

I still long for my pre-move house. I miss our church, the park down the street, the friends we'd started to make, everything. I've not really dealt with that sense of loss - perhaps because I thought that the loss would be temporary, that it was all just a matter of undoing the move to Virginia. And now I'm also faced with the ending of what I had thought would be a lifelong friendship, the departure of the BFF from my life - without anger or rancor, just both of us moving onto other things. I think a fight would be easier.

So. Blue Jelly, indeed. If canning while sad brought Debby Bull back 'round to happiness, perhaps it can work for me, too. It's apparent that I'm not naturally inclined to start new projects from within the veil of sadness but maybe doing so would trigger some kind of muscle-memory of happiness - Oh! my brain might say, "We only do this when we're happy, so happy we must be."

Remember that pineapple lime jam I was going to make? Yeah, me too.