Archive for dance class
>When are we getting started?
>Jesker is laying here by my feet, sound asleep and snoring, so I will start this post and see how far I get into it. He is a strange fellow, because all he did was a little piddle out back, as if he was saving the rest for a larger outing. It’s old age that makes sleep happen to him at the drop of a hat and has him awake again soon enough, ready to go. It’s almost like he is narcoleptic, the way he falls asleep in mid sentence.
I slept like a log again as usual. I’m such a good sleeper nowadays and that is after taking a nap on the sofa while I try to watch the news. Luckily, the news is on a few times at night, so if I miss it once, I get to see it at another time, but it is all bad, so I’m not sure if I want to watch it at all. It said last night that Ireland was especially hit hard by the economic crisis and the poor Irish people are having a heck of a hard time. I suppose I’ll consider myself lucky then, no matter how expensive life is getting.
I’ve cut back my Oxazepam from four times a day to three times a day. I just spread it out over longer periods of time. So far that seems to be working fine and I’m less tired during the day. As usual, I haven’t discussed this with anybody and won’t until next Tuesday when I see my SPN. I like to do these things on my own for whatever reason, probably because I don’t want to be discouraged and I am stubborn.
I’ve also dropped my dance therapy. Doing that right after ergo therapy proved to be too much of a good thing and I found out that I did much better without it. That leaves me with four half days of therapy and I think that is enough. I do need some time on my own and some time to do other things. I don’t always want to be committed to something, although it’s nice to regularly go somewhere and do something useful, as long as it doesn’t leave me feeling exhausted.
Another thing I think I’ve noticed is, that when my mood is about to change, I become very tired and need to sleep a lot during the day. The only thing I can’t remember is what my mood is like during the sleepy period. I know I became hypomanic after it, but what was I before it? Do any of you remember that? I just remember being very sleepy. I suppose I should read my own posts and find out.
Oh, for goodness sake, I just got an email from the Exfactor. He is back from his vacation and is coming by tomorrow to bring me the money I lend him. I have very ambivalent feelings about that. I didn’t really miss him while he was gone. I thought it was more than okay, it was kind of nice. Oh, well.
To get rid of my frustrations, I’m going to clean house now. There are always jobs to do and it will be good for me.
Have a good day.
Ciao…
>The beginning of the bathroom scale era.
>
This morning I weighed myself in my underwear like I always do and I weighed 96.8 kilos, that’s 0.9 kilos less than yesterday. I am going to be a stickler about these numbers and bore you to death with them, but it’s very important to me, so until I’ve lost all the weight, it will be the first announcement I make on every post. You can skip this part if you want to. I’m stubbornly going to keep starting off with it. Until I am as slender as a birch tree. That’s the most slender tree I can think of.
Anyway, I forgot to set the alarm clock last night, but I woke up right on time and took almost a whole hour to sit and have coffee and get my act together. I have much getting together to do in the morning. I have to see if all my parts are working and if they are in a good mood. Usually they are, but they are kind of slow starting and need some time to warm up.
Then, with a rush, I do everything I need to do in the shortest amount of time without forgetting anything and when I’m done, I look at the clock and very leisurely have another mug of coffee and a cigarette and cut it so close that I arrive at therapy with five minutes to spare, so that I can have an espresso out on the deck and ergo therapy always starts late anyway, because our ergo therapist knows that we all need to finish our cigarettes. She’s sympathetic to our cause. Or should I say our need.
Ergo therapy went well. Nobody was in the mood to talk about the week before and we left it at that and made a new start, although in an oblique way we each did refer to our moods over the past week without directly linking it to the cause. Instead, we looked at ourselves personally and how we deal with adversity and how we had always done that in our lives, but there were no great revelations.
Some of us are doing well and some of us are not and together we muddle along and help each other out the best way we know how. Some of us are harder to help than others.
For the second half we had to make an individual collage of things that appealed to us and things that did not appeal to us. We had stacks of magazines and scissors and went to work. After we had put it together, we had to pin it to the wall and present it with an explanation.
The things I liked were very rugged looking men, self assured women, and handsome furniture. The things I didn’t like were Britney Spears, glamor magazines and many samples of very expensive mascaras, which don’t work any better than the cheap ones you can buy at the drugstore. I had more things that I liked and didn’t like, but I can’t remember them now. My mind’s gone blank, but I remember the rugged looking men the best. Two of them had blond tousled hair, very attractive.
In the afternoon I had dance therapy, but the therapist had to go to a meeting so we only had a forty minute class, which was fine with me, because my limbs and my hips were not co-operating and I only finished two thirds of the exercises. I stood there like a fool trying to move my hips becomingly and could not do it, neither could I move my arms and hands in an alluring fashion, let alone do any of these thing while dancing around the room to the music. I think the more I dance, the worse I get. I love the music and I know I have rhythm, but I can’t seem to make those movements. I’m not the least bit sexy or sensual when I do. I swear there is no hope for me, but I’ll just keep plugging away.
Anyway. it did mean that I was home at 2:30 and the dog was not expecting me and I took him completely by surprise. I think he had a stunned look on his face and took him a moment to get into his greeting stance. After a nice glass of cold juice, I walked him and then made a grocery list and bicycled to the store, where it was not busy for a change. I bought my usual groceries, plus some healthy breakfast bars and some mackerel. I am trying to eat a little bit varied. The next time I’ll look for something else that is interesting and that I can eat. I’ll just go exploring in the store and try different things.
I needed an overseas stamp and you can’t just buy one stamp anymore, You have to buy five at the time, whether you need them or not. Buying one stamp is impossible. If you want to buy a stamp for inside the country, you have to buy ten of them. Now it is handy to have ten stamps laying around, you always need those. But five overseas ones? I’ll have to increase my correspondence. This was at the little post office inside the supermarket. It’s very handy that it’s there, but they keep odd hours, so I never know when to go. The middle of the morning and the afternoon seem to be good times.
Finally the animals had food they liked again! They ate with great appetite as if I had starved them. I bought different cat food, to see if they would like it better, because they didn’t seem enthused about the old stuff anymore. I think they like this one, but it is hard to tell. Who knows with cats? They probably want my mackerel.
I get to sleep in tomorrow morning and I don’t have to set the alarm clock. I am expecting someone from domestic help at 1 pm, so I’ll have some time to tidy up around here. She’ll notice the distinct lack of a bucket and I don’t know how I’ve done with out one all this time. I’ve made do a lot.
Well, that’s it for me for today. I’m tired now and need to eat. Some nutrition is called for.
Have yourself a good evening. It was supposed to be a cooler day here today, but it never happened. Maybe tomorrow.
Ciao…
>Whacky World.
>
More then half the week of therapies is behind me and I’m beat. I don’t even have the energy to go to the store and I’m eking out the supplies that are in the refrigerator and the cabinets. I will have to go tomorrow when hopefully I will have the time and the energy. All I did today was make it to the tobacconist for tobacco and filter tubes and the special trash bags and one chocolate bar for a quick pick me up, because I was seriously dragging my butt, going there straight from my dance therapy.
It feels so good to sit here with my mug of coffee and my cigarettes and to just rest my mind and body over nothing complicated at all. I’ve just read new posts to a lot of blogs and that was very enjoyable. Not that people all have uncomplicated lives, but somehow it all seems manageable. There are no catastrophes out there. At least none that I’m aware of. We all have our difficulties, but they are all human sized and within the norm of what is standard.
I guess somewhere along the line you have to make up your mind about that. About what you as a human being can accept in your life as tragedies and how much is too much and how much time do you need to grieve over that before you feel that you can be normal and join the human race again. I suppose the answer to that is different for every person, but maybe much more alike than different for all of us.
I notice that in all of my groups, that each person in their grief and depression and pain and sadness is so much alike and exhibits such similar behavior and has such similar thought patterns. It’s like we all read a big book somewhere that said, under these conditions you act that way. So much of it is very predictable. The beginning, the middle, the end, if it ever comes, all have their own sets of behavior and thought patterns and language and if you’re a patient long enough, and know a lot of things, you see this and get as smart almost as the therapist. I do have to point out that I say almost. That’s very important. You never get as smart as. Patients lack the objectivity.
Hell, I don’t even know if I’m qualified to write that stuff down. They are just my own observations. You do learn a lot in my line of activities. People around me in the groups say I have a lot of courage and inner strength and that I am verbally strong. I dare to talk about subjects that they are afraid to bring up, but are relieved when I do. But I’m not always courageous. I get insecure too and wonder if I say too much or breach the wrong subject and I pay a price for that afterwards if I don’t get the answer to my questions quickly. I have to settle my own sense of insecurity on the spot or walk around with it and it will nag at me until it hurts.
Well anyway, today at dance therapy, we learned to dance with a veil and if you think that’s easy, think again. Your arms get very tired lifting this thing up and around you and twisting it around your shoulders and in front of you becomingly. Then try to do that while dancing with the emphasis on your hips.
I have to tell you very honestly that I’m the worst student in the class and do not move gracefully, but more like a stiff rake with arms an legs attached to it. I have no swing in my hips and no easy bend in my back and all my movements cost effort. And I can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. I lean to the left and forget to breathe. My hip and my back hurt and I have to take mini breaks. I loose the rhythm and have too start all over again. I’m a lost cause.
But still I’ll keep going, because the music is wonderful.
The weather has been gray and cold and windy all day and now it is raining. It’s feast or famine here. We’ll have sunshine again on Friday, but it won’t be warm. That I don’t care about so much. I don’t mind wearing an extra layer of clothes. In fact, I prefer it, it makes for interesting dressing up. And you know how much I like that.
I gave away all my jangly earrings that I never wear to a very nice woman who loves to wear them and I made her very happy with them. I only wear my titanium studs, at least, I think that’s what they are. They never irritate my ears. This woman was wearing a necklace that I very much admired and she’s going to get me one just like it. I’m a necklace person and feel naked without one. So, that’s great.
Tomorrow is music therapy and relaxation exercises and only a short morning. In the afternoon, someone from domestic help is coming for an intake meeting to see what needs to be done to the apartment to get it back to normal again and how much help I need with that. They had lost the original application that was put in when I was depressed and my SPN sent in a new one, because it seems I still need help now with all these extra classes and no idea of how to get things back on the rails.
I’ll leave it at that and walk the dog for the last time and get my pajamas on and do the dishes. Oh, somebody needs to do them. I live here, so it must be me.
Have a great evening.
Ciao…
>What did I tell you?
>
I have such a hard time waking up in the morning. The alarm clock wakens me out of a deep sleep and I need at least an hour to pull myself back into the land of the living because I have been so sound asleep. I sleep like a bear in hibernation. Quite befuddled I sit on the sofa with my mug of coffee and forget to drink it while I try to remember who I am and which day I am living in. In the meantime the Überhund wants my attention and rubs his head against my hands repeatedly and I absentmindedly rub his ears, but woe is me if I stop.
I smoke my cigarettes, but I am unable to get a fresh mug of coffee and sit with my half cold one and just don’t know what to do. The minutes tick away and it keeps getting closer to eight AM, when I absolutely need to get in the starting blocks, which I then do, quite suddenly and then there is no stopping me. I go on automatic pilot and do all the things I need to do in the correct order, so I won’t forget anything.
It isn’t really until after I’ve walked the dog that I’m fully awake and can say I am present and accounted for. Then I look at the clock to see how many minutes I have left to have another cup of coffee and if I can afford to be a few minutes late and how quickly I need to ride my bike without having an accident. I figure I can decently be five minutes late and it is not really a big deal. Anything past that is rude.
During the break in ergo therapy, I met the new creative therapist for Tuesdays and we told her honestly that I had been intimidated to come, but she was ever so nice and took the time to show me around the room and showed me all the different projects I could try working on, which made me quite excited, because I saw things there that I had not seen in the other creative space. Working with lino cuts for example, which I am already sure that I am going to try first and working with Arabian gum and water and ink, which makes real nice effects and all sorts of other things. I was like a kid in the candy shop.
But…we must address this initial fear I have to start new things, because I am going to keep running into this problem and not everywhere in life people are going to be as patient and understanding with me, so I have to develop new strategies. I have fear of the unknown.
After ergo therapy, I had a one hour break, but luckily, so had a bunch of other people and the weather was nice, so we sat out on the deck in the sunshine and I ate four pieces of nougat that I still had in my purse from an outing with Von. I had also been smart enough to bring my one PM medications and remembered to take those. Sometimes I amaze myself.
At 1:30 PM we went down to the rec room for elementary movements, which is moving sensually to ethnic music, that’s the only way to describe it. You will probably remember that I tried this once before and gave up on it, but I was bound and determined to get it right this time. Much to my surprise, I got the really hard movement right, which is moving your hips up and down while moving them back and forth and sideways, while not loosing your rhythm and then walking and stomping your feet along with it.
This is very hard to do, because you have to concentrate on so many things, firstly on your whole body stance and alignment. After you’ve done it for a while. you feel that you’ve tensed up and you have to relax and shake it all about and realign and start all over again. In between we danced loosely however we wanted to very happy music as wild as we wanted. I need some practice in this. I have a very Calvinistic body. It’s not very wild.
We ended with a meditation, which was nice and relaxing and I was home by three PM, full of energy and took the dog for a walk, who had been impatiently waiting for me to get home, because he was right at the door when I opened it.
After that, I had a cup of coffee and sat down for a while, reading my mail and looking at my almost clean living room. I still need to mop the floors, but I got a lot done yesterday and will continue tomorrow morning, which is a day off, because it is Queen’s Day.
Toby is very much better. He no longer has a snotty, runny nose and his eyes are clear. He only sneezes a little bit now, but you can see that there has been a vast improvement. He no longer makes that awful sound when he breathes and he wants lots of affection. And here I was ready to give up on him, that’s how sick he was. Good old Toby.
The Exfactor came by for a quick cup of coffee and after that I somehow found the energy to go grocery shopping, because I was all out of milk. I can’t live without milk. I also bought a six pack of Cola Light, but hadn’t realized that Cola straight from the can would interfere something awful with my gastric band and two swallows from it made me feel like I had had a super meal and I felt a huge burp that was stuck there, but wouldn’t come out. I poured the Cola in a glass and waited for all the bubbles to dissipate before I drank the rest of it. Flat Cola is the best.
Now it’s time to bring the evening to an end. The day sure went by quickly, I feel like there were not enough hours in it. I need to put my pajamas on and relax behind the dumb box for a while. Tomorrow is another day and I get to sleep in. We’ll see what time I naturally get up without the alarm clock.
Sleep tight, all you sweet people, sorry you don’t have a holiday tomorrow.
Ciao…
>On the day…
>On the day you can sleep late, you never do. I woke up just before the alarm clock went off and why do I have it set in the first place you ask? Well, this is a tricky alarm clock that has a mind of its own and fools me into thinking I have shut off the alarm when, in fact, I have not, and then it goes off again one hour later, so some serious alarm clock studying must be done. It has multiple times that it can ring and I think it and I are totally confused.
I found out what the Überhund’s problem was with his front paw. I found a split toenail on the bedroom floor that was split all the way down the length off the nail to the root, so that is what he had been gnawing at during the night. He is fine now and then I realized that that strange hairless skin colored growth on his toe is also gone and when it disappeared, I have no idea, it just isn’t there anymore. It was quite large and very noticeable and I wonder why I didn’t notice it not being there anymore before? I just checked again and there is absolutely no sign of it even having been there. Strange.
Anyway, I had ergo therapy yesterday and quite some attention was paid to my hypomanic episodes and how to deal with them better and how to prevent me from spending too much money. First, I had to explain to the rest of the people what it is like to be hypomanic and that it isn’t just about going out and doing a lot of shopping. How you are hypomanic in every area of your life and how it affects all aspects of it. That you see the whole world through rose colored glasses and that even the sad things don’t seem properly sad.
It was then decided, that I need someone who will check in with me once a week to see what my state of mind is and how my spending pattern is behaving itself. On Mondays and Wednesdays I have my therapies and on Tuesday I usually see my SPN, but at the end of the week, I am sort of on my own and have a tendency to get out of hand then.
It was asked if my sister could be this person and I said, no, she could not now, at this point in her life. It was suggested the Exfactor do it, and although I had some trepidations about it, I could not think of anyone else who could play this role in my life.
So, I called him and asked him to come over yesterday afternoon and I explained the situation to him and he said that he would be more than happy to come by every Friday to check on me and to talk with me about how things are going and if I still have myself and my finances under control. He also had some practical suggestions, which means that he does have some understanding of the complexity of the situation.
I’m assuming that this is a good solution, time will tell. It is better than no solution at all.
Oh, yes. I started dance therapy yesterday afternoon. One hour of dancing to beautiful ethnic music. If you think that is easy, think again, because we had to learn to make some pretty difficult movements and it is going to take quite a bit of practice to learn them well.
When the therapist asked me what sort of music I liked, I said, Björk and Massive Attack and dEUS, and she said, oh, you’re a rocker and I said, well, I guess I am then. I think we were both surprised at that. Imagine me being a rocker at my age.
I can only eat one slice of bread or one slice of raisin bread, if I try to eat more, I upchuck it. I can eat a good sized portion of rice, so that is very filling. I do enjoy eating rice and so does the Überhund. I can eat a good sized portion of yogurt or soup, depending on how thick it is and how chunky. Chunkiness is the key term, chunks don’t go down well. Not even little chunks.
Well, it’s time to get the day started. For a change, it is not raining and I must walk the Überhund before it does again. Today is house cleaning day, yippee!
Ciao…
>Exuberance.
>In my exuberance to get everything back to normal after I got rid of Ubuntu, I accidentally got rid of a whole bunch of images that I thought I had stored on my memory sticks, but it turned out that I had already removed them from there and now they are all lost to me. I am being somewhat lackadaisical about the whole thing and don’t at all see it as the disaster it could really be. I know that I can get the photographs of my grandson and my daughter from her again and my artwork, well, that’s gone and I will have to create new art from I don’t know what sources, because a lot of that is gone as well. It is the kind of stupidity that I have not committed in a long time, so I am very forgiving of myself and I assume there is a reason for it and I will find out down the road what it is. Something about fate and karma and things in life happening for a specific cause and all that. There is no such thing as an accident.
Today has been a ‘let’s pretend there is no household to take care of day’ and it has suited me very well. After I saw my SPN in the morning, I took a long nap on the sofa and I needed that, as emotional exhaustion needs taking care of also by getting some extra sleep. I had slept on the sofa before I went to see her and had gotten up just in time to get ready and walk the Überhund before I had to leave. Sleeping a lot always signals some sort of turning point for me and I hope this one does too.
I’ve lowered my dose of anti-psychotic medication back to the normal dose, as taking too much of it can make you somber and it is better not to take more of it when you are no longer hypomanic. I wrote my psychiatrist an email telling him I was doing this, but I have not heard from him yet. He has the final say on all my medication, but does give me some leeway when I use my common sense. I do have some on occasion.
I had to bicycle through the rain this morning, but it turns out that I have an indestructible hairdo. I have it trained and coiffed so well that it keeps it shape even when it gets drizzled on and blown about. You just don’t touch it after it has gotten really wet, but let it dry and make sure you don’t interfere with it. It dries like a little helmet on your head and then you can brush it into shape again quite easily, for it has kept its form. This works with short hair quite well and a very good hairspray, not the cheap kind anyway.
But now we have real Autumn weather and I have closed the little windows at the top of the living room windows and now I even have the heater on to take the chill out of the apartment. That’s a first for this season. I have started to wear a scarf when I go outside and I have weatherproofed both my new jackets. Pretty soon I’ll start wearing layers of clothes.
I had to get 2 pairs of leggings for my dance class and I got black ones and I am wearing a pair now to make sure I got the right fit and I must say that they are very comfortable. I enjoy wearing them a lot and can see myself wearing them when I don’t go to the dance class. Maybe I will get more in different colors, but that means spending money and I think I’ve done enough of that for now and I need to stop doing that. I may look in the Hema department store and at M&S Fashion to see how expensive theirs are.
I just had my sister on the phone and she was short and to the point, saying in a very matter of fact way that she is not doing well, but that is just the way things are and what are you going to do about it. Not at all inviting to a discussion or an offer for help. So, I don’t know what to do there. I am discombobulated.
I am unable to take the Überhund for a walk, because it is raining again and I have tried to explain this to him and somehow he has understood it, because he is sound asleep now. These are the dull gray and cold days of the Fall when the weather doesn’t invite you to go outside and gather in the glory of the changes that are taking place in nature, although they are happening all around us. The worst part of it is the darkness of the day, which I fight by lighting the lamps in the living room to make it a bit cheerful in here.
Tomorrow is my ergo therapy class, then I have a one hour break and after that I have my dance class. I like moving to music and I don’t think we’ll be dancing the tango or the rumba. The more free flowing, the better. I do have feeling for rythm and melody and am able to translate that into the movement of my body. I can be quite uninhibited when I really forget myself and get lost in the music. I think it will be a good experience.
I do have to remember to bring my midday medication, as a matter of fact, I think I will use one of those little pill boxes that my mother collected and that I somehow ended up with. I just have a few of them and one of them will come in handy now. That is, if I can figure out where I’ve put them.
Alas, I need to end this post and get something to eat and possibly walk the Überhund using an umbrella, although that would mean he would still get wet and he doesn’t like that very much. But he does enjoy getting rubbed dry with a towel very much and I have an old one especially for that purpose.
Take care, keep warm and dry, and don’t let the lack of sunshine get you down too much.
Ciao…
Another Splendid Day 