Help me out here, guys. I'm confuseld, as Tigger would say when singing about Heffalumps and Woozles. (Now. For those of you who don't remember The Muppet Show -- you know, from the Dark Ages of the 1970s? -- please tell me you remember Winnie the Pooh, or I'm going to have to end it all.)

I've spoken in various posts about the son I placed for adoption, and whose mother did some sleuthing and "found" me earlier this year. His birthday was a couple of months after that, so I shopped and shopped and sent him a huge box of stuff. His mom wrote and said he loved everything, and he sent me like a very generic 3-line email. I figure, OK, 16 year old boy is at an age when he doesn't want to deal with one mother, much less two , no problem, got the rest of his life to sort this all out.

Well, that was late May, and his mom and I have been corresponding off and on since then, and then December rolls around and it's Christmastime. I shopped and shopped (although a fair bit less, given that my income dropped precipitously between May and December), and sent off a box of goodies for him for Christmas. Being a good Milwaukeean -- we're known for both our cheapness and practicality -- I put the thing in the mail on Saturday. He got it yesterday.

Last night I went to a friend's house for a couple hours. I came home, checked the email, there was one from his mom's account that was titled "Thanks." I opened it, and it was from my son, using his mom's account. He called me by name, ran down what he liked about each present, said it was very sweet of me to think of him, thank you, have a good Christmas, and signed it "with love." I mean, I even got PARAGRAPHS this time, instead of 3 sentences!

Needless to say, I was flying for the rest of the night, and most of today. And then I had a pdoc appointment.

Sadly, he didn't think I was bad enough off still that I needed more time off work (my 2-week, pdoc-induced vacation ends Monday!), but in the course of talking about other things -- ALL OF WHICH ARE IMPROVING -- I mean, we had this really nice chat about how well things have been going since partial and since I"ve had this time off, and then he says, grabbing his appointment calendar, "How does 2 weeks sound?"

I have been on the frigging 2 week plan since like OCTOBER. I love this guy to pieces, we've worked together for years, he's taken very good care of me, he's a lovely man and cuter than hell to boot (doesn't hurt! LOL), but you know, I don't WANT to see him every 2 weeks for months on end. I have these ever-more-vague memories of the days when he used to think I was well enough to see him every 2 or 3 MONTHS, and I wonder if I will live long enough to see that again.

So I don't really get it. I'm in a good mood for once. The meds that got upped have stopped zombie-ing me out and started working as they're supposed to. I am actually almost bored enough to kind of be interested in work, although that was the original stressor/trigger that landed me in the hospital. Why am I still on the "you're batsh*t-crazy and need to have an eye kept on you" plan? Am I ever getting off it? What constitutes "doing better" to a shrink? Because I think I'm doing pretty darn well right now.

I dunno. Anybody got any ideas? My happiness is being undercut by the fact that my shrink thinks I'm psycho.

Candy