Archive for household help
>If you wish…
>
The colors for Easter are yellow and lavender, that’s what people decorate their interiors with. I thought that was something you might want to know. And I have decided to make deviled eggs on Easter Sunday and to eat those all day long, so I will have a party from breakfast until I go to bed. I haven’t had them in a very long time and right now I have a terrible craving for them. I hope my stomach will not be too disagreeable and allow me this simple pleasure. I will get a wonderful overdose of protein and light mayonnaise. I have 6 eggs, so I should be able to eat those in one day if I don’t eat anything else. That doesn’t sound like an awful lot of food, does it? I must be able to eat more than that.
The Exfactor was just here to borrow my bike. He is restoring a motorcycle and comes to town by train and uses my bike to go to the parts store. He buys things and orders them several times a week. Slowly he is making progress. When the motorcycle is done, he will use it to come to town. We had coffee and watched Tyke’s antics who always makes a big deal out of the Exfactor being here and does all his stunts and other attention grabbing tricks. He’s a cute dog. I was alright about the Exfactor leaving again when he did. My heart strings weren’t pulled too badly. I am very stoic. He has an interesting life away from me and I don’t blame him for holding on to it. He has all the things a man could wish for. Freedom, a relationship and motorcycles. Even his girlfriend rides motorcycles, so what more could he wish for? Well, maybe some men wish for fast cars and babes.
I just got a bill for my own deductible for my health care costs for this year. It is 165 Euros and I’m supposed to pay it by April the 19th. That made me laugh out loud. What a sense of humor those people have. It just kills me. I will call and make an arrangement with them to pay it off in monthly segments. You would suppose that somebody would know that people in the lowest income bracket don’t have 165 Euros lying around. But no… In the new budgetary plans that were just presented by the cabinet, it is planned to increase it to 750 Euros. There was a large uproar about this, of course. It will make people go broke. It’s the most loaded shoulders that carry the biggest burdens.
I’m expecting a visit from a manager of the institution that sends me the domestic help. I don’t really know what she wants. Maybe she wants to know how incapable I am or how capable the help is. I can ask her for the third hour too while she is here. I haven’t done any cleaning because she’s coming. She’ll have to take me as I am. Unorganized with full ashtrays. Well, I’ll empty those. I may even organize the mail.
I don’t feel good on the Welbutrin. I think it does my mood no good at all. In general it is on the low side and sometimes very low after I’ve just taken it. The first few hours I don’t feel all that great and worry a lot. It is especially in the morning that it is bad. I just don’t have the courage and the necessary happiness to face the day. The last days I go back to bed and sleep some more, but when I wake up, I feel like I have a hang over and it takes me a while to get myself together. Overall I feel sad. and not at all like I did the first 2 weeks. I wonder now if it was the absence of the other antidepressants that made me feel good the first two weeks and if after two weeks the Welbutrin really started kicking in. Or maybe I only felt pleasant side effects for the first two weeks. Who knows? I’m not a happy camper. Next week it will be 4 weeks that I am on them. I have an appointment with my psychiatrist then.
The woman from the domestic help was just here and wanted to know how I was and if the help was working out and if there were any problems. Since she asked me with such genuine concern, I told her and she is going to arrange for someone to come in twice a week and for it to be the same person. I think that’s very nice and maybe now I will get clean windows, which is what I really want. I’ve been looking at these dirty ones long enough.
Tyke and I just shared a leftover piece of Camembert, he’s hopefully wagging his tail, but it is all gone. It did taste nice, but now I’m burping. I probably had too much.
I’m going to lie down on the sofa for 5 minutes and just close my eyes for a little while. It’s cold in here.
Ciao,
Nora
>Tell me why…
>My blog template showed up incomplete all day. All I saw was a green screen with text and photos, in other words, things I had posted and filled in. So, I went ahead and installed a different template, but I have the same problem with it, so I have no idea what’s going on. I’m assuming the problem will correct itself, since it is happening with both and I’m stubborn enough to believe it. If not, I will turn into a toad again and when I’m kissed, I will not turn into a beautiful princess, but an old hag. How many people go around kissing toads anyway? I’ve never done it.
The Exfactor did a good deed today. He took the train and specifically came to visit me so I would have someone to talk to. He knew I was having a hard time and he brought a lighter too, so I wouldn’t have to go back to the store to buy one. I told him everything that was on my mind and he could only agree with me and saw the logic in what I was saying. I don’t have emotions, I have symptoms and for all these symptoms there are labels, and for every label there is a pill. Every time I have an emotion, there is a pill or an increase in a pill to kill the emotion. I’m not supposed to feel anything. Every deviation is dangerous.
Well, the domestic help was here this afternoon. It was the same girl who was here last week and I hope she becomes my regular help. I may have to call about that and see if I can arrange that. She wasn’t upset that I hadn’t done anything, but she did tell me to ask for more time for her to do her work in. So three hours instead of two. There’s lots of cleaning left to do in this apartment. Things have been neglected for a long time. At first glance it looks okay, but when you look closer it’s not and those girls know how to look. They see dirt that I don’t. It’s getting harder not to be embarrassed.
Tyke is so fond of the domestic help. He wants all her cleaning supplies, but he listens well when I tell him that no, he is not allowed to steal things. When it was time for her to vacuum, I took him for a walk so he wouldn’t bark the whole time and drive the neighbors crazy. That was a good solution. Too bad I can’t do that when I’m supposed to vacuum.
Now for me the best time of the day starts, after I have taken my 6 pm medicines. I don´t know why that is, but soon afterwards, I always feel the best of any time of the day. I take my medicines, walk the dog, and when I get home, I feel good. It´s not that everything is suddenly okay and that all the problems have been solved, but I feel more courageous and a little more happy and not so drained, while there´s really not much to look forward to but loneliness. I think that is one reason why I write so many posts. I feel that I´m in contact with you all while I´m writing them, as if I´m having a conversation with you and we are connected through the words. When I´m done writing a post, I feel immediate regret and want to start writing another one, so I won´t lose the connection. I will still be part of something bigger than just me and the animals.
On Thursday afternoon, I´m meeting my friend Von at our café on the Our Dear Lady Square downtown. I think it´s been 5 months since we´ve met at the café. I´ll go see if the trees have any buds on them and if the outside of the church has been fully restored. If it is at all possible with my schedule, Thursday afternoons are going to be our regular afternoons.
On Wednesday morning, I have a meeting at the SPC for an intake for the creative classes of which I don´t know when they are going to be yet or when there is a place for me available. I can´t go Monday afternoons or Thursday afternoons, so hopefully there will be something available on other days.
So you see, I have plans and they will be good for me, I have no doubt about it. It will be good to get out of the house and amongst people and have activities and create things. And hang out with Von and drink cappuccinos. I do have to add those to my budget, mustn´t forget that.
Okay, this post is done, because I´ve told you everything that will go in this post. I don´t know if there will be another post. It depends on how the mood strikes me.
Have a good evening!
Ciao,
Nora
>A super Monday…
>
My domestic help just left and she did a super job cleaning the bathroom and the doors and the wood work and mopping the floors. She asked me what I wanted her to do and I gave her several options and she went straight to work. It was a completely different experience from last time when I didn’t feel that I was in charge at all. So, I really want this girl to come back.
You all thought I was doing chores out of my own free will before she came over to make the apartment look good, but that is not the case. I had a list of things that I was supposed to take care of and I had not done a thing all week, so I thought I had better get busy on it. I should have been dusting and sweeping all week, but I didn’t see the sense in that and it seemed like a waste of time. Before the domestic help came over I was supposed to dust and vacuum and mop the floors, and clean the toilet and wash basin.
Well, I dusted the livingroom and vacuumed my bedroom and the area rug, but Tyke gets very hyper and barks non stop when you vacuum and that’s not pleasant for the neighbors. So I swept the rest of the apartment, but I refused to mop the floors. I sort of cleaned the toilet and the wash basin was okay. I was going to clean the door that the Exfactor got out of the shed, but never got around to it, and the girl ended up doing it for me today, which I thought was very nice of her.
I did figure that I did enough of my share of the work and busied myself with other things while she was here. So called administrative work and phone calls. I made it look all very important, and some of it really was, because I have decided to start the therapy classes at the location downtown and have to have an intake for that and I called to make an appointment for it. My contact person there was very happy to hear it and I feel full of p**s and vinegar and courage, and I’ve only had two cups of coffee so far.
I slept 11 hours last night, I went to sleep at 8 pm, because I was completely beat and sat here as a sad little sparrow behind the computer, and I woke up at 7 o’clock this morning. I thought that was enough sleep and got up, though maybe I could have slept more. Tyke decided it was time to get up and I did have to take my medicines. I only sat here slightly comatose, not as bad as it has been at other times, and I was functioning pretty quickly. At least within a half an hour. I allow myself to be completely confused for the first 30 minutes. I try to function, but I know it’s useless. After a long sleep, my brain needs more time for reconstruction. I guess it takes the neurons a little while longer to find the pathways.
My sister did some groceries for me while the help was here. We couldn’t go together, because she had other obligations later this afternoon. She picks up groceries for me and doesn’t want to get paid for them, so I keep them to the bare minimum and only ask for a few things. I’m still trying to find out what her bank account number is, so I can transfer some money to it, but she won’t tell me.
She’s so generous and I have Nutella again, but I have to tell you, over all I feel better if I don’t eat, or eat very little. Food does not make me happy. I only eat a little because I get hungry, but that’s it. A few bites and that’s enough. I don’t indulge and I have no desire to. It’s almost as if food is a mind altering substance and I like how I feel without it.
While the domestic help was here, Tyke was stealing the sponges out of her bucket and tearing them to pieces under the dining table. We only caught on to what he was doing when he walked into the living room with the third dripping wet sponge in his mouth. I was on the phone and had not noticed it, but I looked under the table and there were a hundred pieces of sponge lying there, and Tyke had that innocent “Who me?” look on his face. He was very disgusted that we had caught on to him and tried it a few more times, until I managed to distract him with a rawhide stick. He sure does like the domestic help, though, and follows them wherever they go and tries to steal their supplies, because he tries to get their cleaning rags too, but he finds everything they do interesting.
The windows haven’t been cleaned yet and the sun is shining brightly through them. Oh, what a wonderful sight. It makes me almost want to do them myself, except that I am notoriously bad at cleaning windows. I could do the ones in the back, though, because the sun never shines on them and nobody would see if they were done well or not. The problem is that I would also have to do the woodwork and I’m less enthused about that. That’s such finicky work. I will have to give this some thought and see if I can come to my senses.
Oh, it’s completely later in the evening now and I got completely side tracked, because I wanted some music, but I had to get my speakers to work and they didn’t, no matter what I tried, so I switched speakers, but I couldn’t get them to work either, but never mind, I decided to go to Deezer anyway and start a new playlist for Jazz and got completely wrapped up in that, so I forgot all about the time and my surroundings. I was like a little fanatic woman going after as many jazz performers as I could think off and I will have the Exfactor look at the speakers tomorrow and see if he can make any sense of them. I realy have no idea what I am doing wrong, unless there is a cable missing that I am also supposed to plug in, though I have no idea where that cable would go. I am stumped and in need of expertise.
I’m sitting here quite cozily by the light of the desk lamp without a cup of coffee, so that brings my total to 3 today. Not bad, eh? From all the excitement of hanging out at Deezer and looking up artists, I have become so worked up that I am not in the least tired now and I need to find a way to slow down. I do want to have another good sleep like I had last night, but I guess you can’t always expect repeat performances. I’m not nearly ready to go to bed, but I will put on my pajamas and pretend I’m very sleepy. Oh, I forgot, I have to walk Tyke still. I better do that before I put my pajamas on. I would look kind of strange if I went out there in my bathrobe.
I’m in a very good mood and feel invinceable, without a spell check it is hard to figure out if I wrote that right, but I’ll assume that you know what I mean. I feel like doing great deeds and that I ought to do them now and not waste any time and now the act of sleeping seems like a waste of time. I have to go see my psychiatrist tomorrow afternoon and I can’t lie about the amount of sleep I had, so I better make sure I get to bed at one point. I have to be so darn honest all the time. I can’t tell any white lies for the sake of my own bestwill as I see fit. I feel like today the medicine really kicked in and started too work and tomorrow it will be two weeks since I started on it. No, actually, I took my first pill on a Monday evening, I think. Yes, I’m sure of it. Without psychiatric approval.
I have lost 4.5 kg. I wasn’t going to get on the scale all the time, but now I find myself curious regularly and I do. I try not to make a daily habit of it and when I forget and have had a cup of coffee, I don’t weigh myself. I have to do it first thing when I get up out of bed or not at all. Luckily, very often I forget. Otherwise it would become an obsession and I don’t want it to be, because I eat what I eat and that has nothing to do with how much I weigh. I’m not going to count glasses of milk.
I just got natural capsules for the menopause in the mail that I had ordered on line and I just took the first one and I’m very curious to see if they will help me. They are recommended for women between 43 and 63 years of age. The big question is if they will interfere with my medications, that is always the risk I take. I will find out soon enough. I want to try them because I want to find out if they will help me with my night sweats and having to go to the bathroon every night. It says it will help that. Well, we’ll see. Maybe these will be good and they will actually do their job, they are from a reputable firm, so I expect results. If I start to act funny, you know it will be why.
It’s getting late now and I really do need to go walk my poor dog. I have given him a stuffed monekey to play with and it is a great success, except that now I keep thinkin, “What is that dead animals lying on the floor?”
I could go on talking at you guys forever, but I’ll call a halt to it and spare you your patience. I have so much to say and nobody to say it to. Darn it!
Have a good night, you people!
Ciao,
Nora.
>More than I was aiming for…
>
My post to entertain you all last night, turned somewhat introspective, no doubt because of the late hour and the intimate and cozy setting it was written in. Besides, when a person is only talking to herself without immediate feedback, it does give you a tendency to get deeper into a subject than might have been your intention and you have to call yourself back from those places that get too refelctive and do some editing once in a while. That means deleting large portions of self indulgant drivel.
Introspection is good, as long as I stay on this side of the line of reality. It’s not good to see myself as a goodly earth mother, with ancient Saxon roots, who is connected to nature and all that lives in it and who lives in a hut in a meadow and brews potions to make all your ailments disappear, though it is a lovely thought. I need to be the real me in the real world and not fantasize lyrical about willow trees and cows in the meadow by the stream.
I’ve had that period in my life and was completely disconnected from reality, insulated from it, although I also think back on it with some amount of pleasure, but I can weep for the fog caught in the twisted oak trees and the moss on the forest floor and the deer that walked there through the dead leaves. There are bits of scar tissue in my heart from that.
Right, and now for something completely different. I am drinking more coffee again. Not as much as I was before, but more than the three cups I was drinking lately. I am now drinking about six cups a day and most of it in the morning. I don’t know where this sudden desire came from, although it may have something to do with the fact that I cleaned the Senseo machine and the coffee tastes better now. I was drinking a bitter cup before that took the pleasure out of it. I’m also sleeping less and in more need of a pick me up in the morning and I do notice the difference. So, more coffee it is. Whether or not it is good for me. Experience will tell.
I guess you always have periods in your life when you are more sensible about yourself and when you are not. Last night I didn’t get to sleep on time and I woke up relatively early this morning. I know I won’t take a nap all day, because I’ve sworn those off and that leaves me no other choice but to go to bed on time tonight. I don’t know how that affects the reality of my day, or better, how I experience it. I know it has a tendency to make me lazy and to not want to do anything that requires physical effort, although that’s probably just the thing I should do. That would put a different slant on my day and my attitude. I can’t always be living in my head and monitoring my emotions. Sometimes I have to step out of it and experience something else.
I slept on my elbow wrong and I can’t bend my arm without having pain in my hand. Usually it disappears after I’ve been up for a while, but now it’s hanging on stubbornly. That poor nerve must really be pinched. I wish I knew what to do about it, but I know of no exercise that can help it. I want to take something for the pain, but I don’t know how that affects my other medicines, so I’m afraid to do it. I’m so happy when I feel good, that I’m afraid to add another pill to the mixture to upset the balance. Already I can’t take the vitamin and mineral capsule, because it completely interferes with the working of my other medicines.
I have to go and do some household chores now. Tomorrow the domestic help comes and I have to have these things done before she gets here. That means I have to shut the computer off. By the way, I didn’t even finish my third cup of coffee. I had enough of it.
Have a good day.
Ciao,
Nora
>Another post to let my words out.
>
The domestic help was here this afternoon. She was a real nice young woman. Unfortunately, she is not going to be my steady help and I don’t know who that is going to be yet. I may have several different people here before that is decided. It’s a real shame, because I liked the one I had today and got on well with her. She cleaned my whole kitchen from top to bottom. I dusted the living room really well, including the lamps and the picture frames. She vacuumed and mopped the apartment and I cleaned the bathroom sink and the toilet.
I didn’t do a fraction of the work she did, but I was so tired that I spaced out and had to sit by the dining table and recuperate. She was a hard worker and didn’t take a break. She left me a daily list of little jobs to do, so that when the domestic help gets here, she can concentrate on the big jobs, such as washing the windows and mopping the floors and cleaning the shower basin and all those fun things. I have to do things such as vacuum once a week and sweep the floors and keep the toilet clean and change my bed, beside the laundry and the dishes and the usual things that come with the household, such as dusting which always needs to get done.
Lord, you should have seen the dust I got off those lamps. It was plain scandalous. I don’t know why I never did that before. Or clean the light switch covers. I was lucky in that I didn’t suffer any embarrassment. I figured she had seen worse and I was a needy case. It was good to have someone in who said to me, “Now you go and do that.” To celebrate, I will clean the utensil drawer tomorrow and throw away obsolete items that are sitting on the kitchen shelves that were cleaned today. Does anyone want a toaster? I really don’t have room for it and it is in the way of everything. These European kitchens are so little.
My sister and I went grocery shopping shortly after 8 o’clock this morning and we were done quickly, because it was very uncrowded in the store. That time of the day really is the best time to shop. I bought huge amounts of milk and a big jar of Nutella and good things for the dog and Fish Menu for the cats and I threw away their old bowls and gave them a new ceramic bowl to eat from. They can dine in style.
We also stopped by the tobacconist, without to much complaining from my sister, and I got my supply of tobacco. It is very frowned upon that I smoke and I told my sister that my psychiatrist had said to me to please not stop smoking. It is like medicine to me and I would get into deep doodoo if I tried to quit now. It would be different if I were an alcoholic, I’m sure. I would be incoherent then.
I was walking Tyke this evening and suddenly a wind started to blow hard and very threatening, dark clouds raced across the sky, and I thought, ‘Oh boy, it´s really going to rain hard now, I better get home and bring the laundry in,’ but then nothing happened at all. It was all a false alarm and not a drop of rain fell out of the sky and this while they had been predicting a light rain all day that had never materialized. They never get it right for our little part of the country. I´m glad because the laundry is still hanging outside and I do want it to get dry there, because they are bed linens and I want to make my bed with them and have it smell good.
I changed my email addresses, because it turned out that the old addresses were still in the Exfactor´s name and I had been warned that one day, when the company went through all the obsolete accounts, they would be removed. So now I have two email addresses under my own name. One incognito and one real one. I´ve also simplified the username and the password with the help of the excellent people at the helpdesk. You just need to talk to the technicians and you are in good hands. Nobody else there knows what they are doing, but these guys do. They are the best.
I now spend half of my life being Nora Ibsen and I´m seriously considering changing my name to it, although they are rather strict in the Netherlands about that. You can´t just up and decide that that´s who you are going to be now. A judge has to rule over it and the queen has to sign the final papers. I can´t change my name until after my daughter has gotten her Dutch passport, which should happen this year and she will have all the rights of a Dutch citizen. She´s so excited about it and so am I. Her son has a German passport, so he is already a European.
Every once in a while I have a tiny little fall in a pothole moment. It lasts just a minute, but for that minute I feel like shit, and then it´s over and I´m fine again. It´s hardly worth mentioning, but an interesting phenomenon. It reminds me that I can´t take anything for granted, although I´ve had a good day.
I do easily get tired, though, and I realize that I have to build up my mental stamina slowly again. Doing physical jobs is not physically so much tiring as it is mentally, because they have a tendency to defeat me. It´s the endless futility of them that bothers me so, although I guess if you really get it cleaned up well, it does stay that way for a while, and if you keep on top of it, it doesn´t get out of hand and become a huge chore for you to tackle. You know, I used to do these things so easily when I was younger and happier.
I´m planning on being happier again, though. It´s definitely a short term goal and I feel it is within easy reach. I just have to have a lot of faith. I hope that by being proactive I can make a change in my life. I have to believe in that process.
I hope you all have a great night.
Ciao,
Nora
>In the early morning.
>
I wemt to bed on time last night, because I was sleepy early, and for a change I am up early also and completely done sleeping. I double checked to make sure, but I really was and felt comfortable enough to get up. I´ve had one cup of coffee, but that´s all the caffeine I need for now and I´m drinking a glass of cold milk now. I think the new medication makes me thirsty, because I´m constantly in need of something cold to drink, and no, it can´t be water. I´ll never forget the insult of my first mother in law when she finally came to our apartment for a visit and said she could only stay for twenty minutes and that all she wanted to drink was a glass of water. Really! By European conventions that is a very bad thing to do.
Well, that´s pulling old cows out of the ditch, as they say, and we won´t do that.
So, I´m wide awake and now it turns out that I can go grocery shopping this morning with my sister after all, so I have to call her at 8 o´clock and let her know. She´ll be pleased to hear it, because we had planned to go at 4 this afternoon when it will be crowded. This also gives me the opportunity to clean the refrigerator before the domestic help gets here this afteroon. I think that´s the least I can do. I don´t want the poor woman to think that her task is hopeless.
I have to make a shopping list of what I have to get, though it´s not that much, at least not a great variety of things. Very much milk and catfood and rawhide sticks for the dog and coffee pads and Nutella! Some other things I´m not thinking of right now, but hopefully will soon.
I´ve lost 2.8 kilos in the past week. That´s good because I had gained 15 kilos this past year or so. It was due to the increase in my antipsychotics. It made me eat more and gain weight. I think they just make you gain weight period. This Welbutrin that I´m on now suppresses your appetite, so you lose weight. That´s better than the Effexor that made me gain weight. My mood stabilizer also makes me lose weight, but that effect had become undone by the effects of the other medicines.
I tried to eat my regular bowl of porridge the other day, but I ate it without the usual good appetite and I haven´t had any since. I have no desire to eat it and that´s saying a lot. I just eat bits and pices of things now and I drink a lot of milk. I´ve even finished the fruit juice and will buy a new container today because I think I need the vitamins even though it makes my ear and head itch where my eczema is.
Oh, I see it´s time to take my medicines. I wasn´t paying attention, so wrapped up was I in writing this post. I also have to get dressed and walk the dog.
Hav a good day, you all. I hope the weather is good for you. It´s supposed to be 7C here and we may have some light rain. Whoopie!
Ciao,
Nora
>Anothter bright day.
>
Last night, after making sure there was nothing in the bedroom that Tyke could demolish, I brought all of his toys in there and brought him in there with me and closed the door, so we could have a good night’s sleep. I worked out very well, and I woke up this morning with Tyke in my arms and it was 10 am. I had slept for nearly ten hours. Isn’t that just absolutely wonderful?
It is a good thing that I woke up when I did, because very shortly thereafter, the doorbell rang and it was a lady from the foundation that is handling my domestic help and she came by to drop off some paperwork and have a nosy look around, no doubt. Well, she saw how things were and we filled out the paperwork and I did not make any apologies for anything, but I was still half asleep and I don’t know what sort of impression I made on her. Never mind, though. It doesn’t matter. I’m the woman who needs help. I’m not the queen in her palace.
It took me some time after she left to get my act together. I had to take my medicines, and make sure I took the right ones, and make myself a cup of coffee, and get the mail out of the mailbox, which I had not done in three days, so I thought I had better do that. Then I was too fuzzy headed to read it and left it for later until I was properly awake. I was also very thirsty and drank a tall glass of milk and let Tyke out back where he did his necessary business, because I was in no shape to walk him. It took me an hour to become halfway functional and even then I was rubbing the sleep out of my eyes.
I’m not complaining, though. I love how much I sleep. It’s a godsend. I get up once during the night to go to the bathroom, but am immediately asleep again and hardly remember going. I do it on automatic pilot. People could be having a party in the living room and I would not know about it.
I’m still yawning now and I wonder if that is an after effect or a sign that I need to sleep more. I’ll just consider it an after effect. I may take a nap later this afternoon, but I’m going to stay up now. I’m too glad to be awake and feel the effects of my medication. The calmness of it all. The lack of stress. I hope it stays that way.
It was so funny to wake up with Tyke in my arms. I don’t know how he got there, but it was very cozy. He had been there for a long time, I do remember that. That’s the benefit of lying in bed, there’s more room for the both of us. It is nice to have another warm body beside you, even if it is a dog. It’s a living thing and it is lovable, so I am not complaining about that.
The cats had been locked out, but it didn’t seem to have bothered them at all, At least they had been freed of the enthusiasm of the dog for a whole night and I’m sure they appreciated that. He does love Gandhi so much and constantly wants to play with her, until she is sick and tired of it and starts to complain. Luckily, she now has the sense to jump on the dining table where he can’t get to her, but it sure took her a long time to figure that out. I guess she isn’t that bright. Don’t get me wrong, she’s very sweet and I love her, but she’s gullible and she lets Tyke get away with things, but always comes back to hang out with him.
Now I need some fresh air and I’m going to take him for a walk and have the wind blow the cobwebs from my mind. It’s overcast and 4C outside. Not too cold, but not exactly balmy either.
Have a good day.
Ciao,
Nora
>Sleeping Beauty?
>
You’re all not going to believe this, but I slept 9.5 hours last night. I don’t believe it myself, but it’s true. It’s been many years ago since I slept that long. It’s an absolute record breaking event and I should get a gold medal for it, or at least an honorable mention. I got up because I needed to take my medicines and the dog needed to be fed and walked, of course. I might have slept longer otherwise.
It may possibly have to do with the fact that I take my antipsychotics at night now instead of spread out during the day, which made me sleepy in the daytime. It may have to do with the new medication, although you are supposed to get insomnia from that. I haven’t noticed that, although I do go to bed later, but I don’t lie awake.
Either way, I am so grateful to be sleeping for such long stretches on end. I have wanted this to happen for such a long time, but didn’t think it ever would again. I thought I was doomed to a life of cat naps.
I’m trying to drink less coffee too and drink more milk. I can’t drink the fruit juice, because it upsets my stomach and makes my eczema itch. I can’t drink tea with sugar, because it makes me cough. I haven’t tried tea without sugar yet. Somehow it’s not as appealing. Cold milk quenches my thirst and is filling. When I don’t feel like eating, a glass of cold milk does the job. I don’t feel like eating lots of times, which is okay, because my body could feed quite a few cannibals. Coffee was an artificial method to try and make myself feel better, I don’t have to do that now. I feel better already.
I’m getting help in the household starting next Monday. This is really someone who comes to clean. First for two hours, but it can be for more if it’s necessary. Up to four hours, but I don’t think I will need that much time. Isn’t that great? It is such a relief to me to get someone in to help me get things back in order and to keep them in order. I will do a little bit of cleaning before she comes, but not too much. It has to stay realistic. I do have a problem that I need help with.
I have to go and bring some order into my life now. Just the ordinary odds and ends that belong to living with cats and a dog.
Ciao,
Nora
>Decisions…
>
My SPN and I have decided that I am not going to start at the SPC until January. At least, I have decided that and she has concurred. She said for me to say that it was my intention to start in January, so I won’t feel like I let anybody down if I don’t quite make it then. I found out today that I can go there three afternoons a week and that I can start immediately, but the therapist there that I talked to over the phone this morning, after missing my appointment, also said I could start in January if I wanted to. She was not upset about me missing the appointment, by the way, but concerned about me not being able to make it. That’s what I’m running into, people who are concerned about me and want to help.
My SPN and I are going to try and get me help in the household. She is going to send away for the papers to apply for the budget now and the whole procedure will take about 8 weeks. I purposely did not clean up the apartment before she came over this afternoon so that she could see what a mess it has been for the last 3 weeks, nor did I have the energy to do it. It totally defeated me.
I was pretty much a mess when she was here this afternoon, after I had already been a mess over the phone with the therapist from the SPC. This afternoon I bawled my eyes out, simply because that’s what I needed to do and I felt very much in despair. Now I feel that I need to be over that and that I have to pull myself together and not make such a fuss. I also feel that the sword of Damocles is still hanging over my head, but maybe I can ignore it for a while. I so very much want a feeling of peace and serenity that I am willing to ignore whatever is about to happen in the future, however unpleasant that is.
Look, I realize that I’m depressed now and that it colors my perspective on everything in my life. That’s why I want to step out of it for a while and not participate. If I act from this frame of mind nothing much good is going to come out of it. I can put as much as possible on hold and wait until I am in a better frame of mind to deal with it. That takes a lot of the pressure of. I won’t feel so terribly stressed that way.
I also want to talk about other things.
The dog is healthy again. I have been feeding him a combination of gourmet dog food and white bread and now his diarrhea is gone. He has finished his antibiotics and should be cured now. The ointments that I apply twice a day have made his eyes a lot better. They no longer have that discharge and they are not as red. I have to keep applying them nonstop. I can’t take a break from them and let any time go by without using them, because the problem recurs after a while. He likes the white bread very much and thinks it’s a real treat. Since he has a tendency to have loose bowel movements anyway, I’m going to keep giving it to him. It makes the pick up easier.
He’s been such a good dog and not at all badly behaved. I find that if he gets enough to eat and gets his regular walks, he is fine, although he does have a tendency to want more of something if he likes it a lot. I just have to ignore him then and I pretend I don’t see him looking at me with his big droopy eyes. If I show him my empty hands and tell him it’s all gone, he gets the message too, although it’s very dubious how much he actually hears and how much body language he interprets. I know he is always watching me to get his clues from me and I don’t depend so much on him hearing me as I do on him seeing what I want him to do. I think he knows how to lipread and read facial expressions.
The cats are fine and are always in their vigilant positions in the kitchen hoping something exciting will happen, like maybe I will open up a package of dog food or pour myself some milk or turn on the cold water faucet. Never mind that there is a dish of water standing right there. That is old water and they don’t want that. They want new water from the faucet.
I don’t know what to blame this depression on, but it could be a number of things. It could be a coincidence of circumstances. A piling up of all the wrong things at the wrong time. I’m usually very good at the ostrich policy. I guess that this time it’s not going to work.
Ciao,
Nora
Another Splendid Day 
>Funnier!
March 18, 2010 at 2:45 pm · Filed under blog post, blogs, chores, comments, computer, emails, household help, housewives, language, middle of the night, sleep, the Exfactor, Tyke, writing
>
I had written a post earlier this morning that I decided was so boring that I deleted it and I want to start all over again. It is possible that I don’t have it in my fingers today to write a good post, but we will see. I will give it my best shot and see what I can make of it. I may not be quite as funny as I normally am. Maybe I am more serious today than I am on other days. If so, it is because I didn’t get enough sleep. I didn’t go to sleep until the middle of the night, diistracted as I was by things to do on the computer and there are always so many of them.
The fact that I have a new computer doesn’t help things either, because it makes me think that I can do everything better than I used to, so I want to try that out. I like my email program, so I’m constantly checking for emails, or writing them, and I find that very satisfactory. Looking for interesting blogs is an other favorite activity, as if I don’t read enough already and keeping up with them is a full time job, but I gladly put in the time.
Leaving comments is a tricky business, because at some blogs that I read I never leave any, feeling as if I’m an interloper there who really has no business being there and the other comments seem so good that I can’t think of anything equally good to say. I should have a little more confidence in myself. I’m sure I don’t come across as the shy and retiring type.
More than anything I like writing posts, because I like the business of writing. It doesn’t matter so much to me what I write about as long as I do it as good as possible. I always have doubts about spelling and grammar, not having been formally educated in them in this language, but I think I fake it pretty well. I know I’m confused about expressions sometimes and use Dutch ones in English, because I’m not sure of which language they belong to. I’m trapped between the two and thinking in both of them.
I could write posts all day long and maybe never run out of things to say, while in real life I’m not much of a talker, depending on who I’m with. I feel handicapped in my speech, as if saying something out loud is harder than writing it down. Of course, I have to speak in Dutch and I still manage to make a mess of it and want to use many English words. It happens in a discussion that I don’t remember the Dutch words for things and use the English ones, so I end up speaking Dutchlish. I also happens that when I’m trying to write down a concept in a post, I have to think it through in Dutch first and translate it into English before I can put it down in complete sentences.
I’m glad I have a domestic help now, because I’m going to have her wash the windows next Monday. They are so dirty, I should be ashamed of myself, but I’m not. Dutch housewives have clean windows, but I don’t consider myself one. You see them in the middle of winter, out with a bucket of suds and a stepladder, cleaning their windows in their plain clothes without a jacket on and I think they are mad. They also scrub the entrance way and the stoop and the front door in freezing temperatures. I’m not that dedicated. So the domestic help can clean the windows. I brought that up, because the sun is shining on them now and I can see all the dirt. I fills me with anxiety and I won’t let it. I’m for an anxiety free life.
The Exfactor was here this afternoon and put the door back on in the spare bedroom. It was always a bit of a mystery to me why he had taken it off, except that it seemed to be in the way to him. It had been stored in the shed all this time and of course it is rather dirty, so I have to clean it with a lot of elbow grease. I keep it ajar, so the cats can go in and out through the cat flap that’s in the back door there, but at least it takes the view away of all those unsightly boxes that are sitting there and the eternal dust and debris that the cats drag in.
We only had a short political discussion, more for the form than anything else and I let him do most of the talking, which he does easily. Sometimes it helps to be the more silent one. Tyke entertained us with his follies and that took up some time. Thank goodness for a funny dog.
I have to do some chores now, duty does call me. It has a nagging little voice that can not be ignored.
Have a great day. It is 18C here, isn’t that a miracle?
Ciao,
Nora
Comments (7)