Down In the Mouth

I was thinking of talking about how down in the mouth I felt today and how the mood seemed to come out of the blue.  But the memory of this picture made me question whether my wobbly mood came anywhere close to worthy of that phrase now so tightly tied in my mind to this picture of my sister.

I've long been familiar with that phrase--down in the mouth--found in old novels, directed at me by grandmother's.  I knew what it meant too but only abstractly until this week when my sister sent me a picture of herself taken the day after her oral surgery last week.  Now I have a skin-shivering, visceral, comprehension of its meaning.

So I chided myself for putting my wishy-washy mood in the same category as the genuinely earned 'down in the mouth' my sister had the day after her oral surgery and the car wreck she and her friend got in on the way home from the dentist.

Even worse, I realized that, not only was there no mystery as to where my mood came from but it was entirely of my own doing.  Unlike my sister's mood triggered by necessary dental work and a jarring accident, mine might as well be ascribed to me having taken a hammer to my own front teeth and then asked for sympathy while expressing mystification as to why I felt so bad.

My mood is the direct result of nearly two weeks of completely dissing my sleep and med schedule.  Without the duties and social expectations in place when Mom and Carri are here I immediately slid back into old habits--not sleeping, missing meds, forgetting meals, laying down at dawn and waking at dusk, neglecting to fill my water bottle.

And I wondered why I sported an upside down smile?

I think I need to go back to bed and hope I get up on the right side at dawn.