Depression is an insidious thing. It begins subtly, slowly zapping the strength, will-power, desire, and life, until in the end, there is little of anything left of the person who used to be.

There are the usual symptoms you can get from any website that talks about depression: anxiety, apathy, boredom, general discontent, guilt, hopelessness, inability to feel pleasure, loneliness, loss of interest, mood swings, sadness, or emotional distress. None of these in and of itself are a guarantee of depression, but they do signal that depression is a possible cause. Given that depression is so common, even Google has an immediate call out about the symptoms. Impressive.

The trick to surviving depression is to knowing it's coming, to see the signals before the full episode hits you. Given that the signals are different for every person, that trick becomes tricky indeed.

Jessica once asked me, "If you knew it [depression] was coming, why wouldn't you do everything you could to stop it?"

I couldn't answer her at the time, but now I think I can.

Because you don't always know see it coming before it is too late.

I know my symptoms. Better yet, I know my triggers. THAT knowledge is worth all the gold in all the world to me.

I also have coping mechanisms. Some work better than others. Some rely on others. Some work really well, some help just a little. I use them all.

So, when a friend asks, "Would you like to help me install the insulation today?" and I know, I KNOW, that the reason I'm sleeping until noon, reading a lot, not exercising, avoiding friends, avoiding social situations, being grumpy at work, and wanting nothing more than to crawl into my bed with the covers over my head and avoid the world is because I'm heading into another blue funk and becoming depressed, I will answer, "Yes."

Because crawling under a house is an adventure I won't have if I don't say yes.

Because meeting up with a friend I haven't seen in year won't happen if I don't say yes.

Because learning at a tech meetup won't happen if I don't say yes.

Because 67161 burpees won't happen if I don't say yes.

I know what I want to do, and I know that it doesn't lead me to who I want to be.

So, I will say yes, even though I have exactly zero desire to do so, because I know, if I weren't sliding down that hill into the black chasm, I would say yes. That yes does lead me to who I want to be.

Andy asked me today, "Would you like to help me install the insulation today?" He had been putting up insulation in the floorboard joists in the crawl space and I had offered a few days ago to help. I responded, "I have exactly zero desire at this moment to install insulation, which is why I will say, 'Yes.'"

As to why I said yes, having no desire, is the story for another day. Today's story is about the insulation. In particular, the 27 pieces sitting in the guest room.

Having recently been under the other house, I knew there would be a lot of dust and a lot of dirt, so I changed into my work clothes and shoes, and asked Andy for safety equipment: glasses, face mask, gloves. He handed me the head light, too.

So, the first thing up, get the insulation under the house. I passed them down to Andy, who shoved them to the side close to where we were going to install them. I hadn't crawled under yet, so didn't quite understand just how much of a feat this moving of insulation strips would be.

After passing the insulation down, I followed.

The strips were cut into the correct width between the joists, so at least we didn't have to cut them. They were also cut to about the correct length. I hadn't realized how standard the distances were in houses, but of course they are, since they are limited by the strength of the materials used, and limited by the sizes used. I should probably think about these things more.

What I was not expecting when I went under the house was just how little space the house had under it. My first crawlspace experience (as in, a house without a basement) was the Klein's house back in Indiana. I thought it was odd that a house didn't have a basement, but it did have a cemented crawlspace, which, again, in retrospect, is odd: if you are digging out a space for a crawlspace, why not dig another 5 feet for a basement?

Under Andy's house, there was enough room for me to army crawl (army crawl, military crawl, low crawl, whatever), and that was about it. There wasn't any room to crouch, as I was expecting to have from recent experience.

One of the things that does not bother me at all is getting dirty (another story to tell on another day!), so I pretty much went all in on this army crawling stuff. Good thing, as there really isn't much room under the house.

Amusingly enough, it wasn't until I was good distance under the house before Andy asked, "So, you don't get claustrophobic, do you?"

Fortunately, not normally.

We went through, maneuvered the insulation strips under the floorboards, between the joists, and placed rods spaced to keep the insulation in place. For the most part, the insulation stayed in place. The rods under slight tension made sure the insulation stayed in place for reals.

We did the first nine sheets without trouble. They were closest to the crawl space entry point. SPEAKING OF, gosh, there are very few egress points under a house.

I suggested the farthest point in the house for the second nine. After that, I was done. Not sure what was going on, maybe the dust, maybe the movement under the house with only 12" clearance, maybe the 40 minutes of breathing only through my nose did it, but I was done.

I think Andy did a few more before coming up. He said putting in the insulation with help is more than twice as fast and going solo, so he was glad for the help. I told him that my limit was 18 of the strips, but that I'd be good to help again.

I'm glad I said yes to the adventure.

And I'm really glad for the mask. So much dirt I didn't inhale.

Last year when I updated my site, I named my theme "kh2015" clearly with the intention of having a new look in the next year. I also created the theme in such a way that updating the look would be straightforward: just update the CSS.

Which apparently I did once, for Valentines day, and not any time after that.

Which rather bites, in terms of following through on the keep-the-site-updated intention.

Yesterday, when I went to update something, who knows what I was changing, I don't recall, I realized the theme name, and realized, yikes, already the next year! Time for an update.

So, yay, new theme done for 2016. I've de-emphasized the traditional blog, single-feed style of the site in favour of multiple channels. Rather than tweak until the design is "perfect," I've pushed out what I have, warts and all. I need to test it for performance yet, and I DEFINITELY need a better responsive images solution than what I have (which is pretty much typing in an img tag and filling out all the attributes).

I have a few more things to add to increase discovery, but, well, until the book is done and the tutorials written, this new look, warts and all, will suffice.

Here's to a lot of posts here in 2016.