Archive for worries
December 12, 2010 at 4:22 pm · Filed under bedroom, bookcase, chores, courage, domestic help, energy, laundry, organizing, paperwork, sofa, the cold, Tyke, washing machine, worries
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I’m in the middle of doing chores and really don’t have the time to sit down and write a post, but while the washing machine is churning away, I figured I could ignore the dishes and sit here for a bit. I can see the dishes from where I’m sitting behind the computer and I’m glancing at them as I write. I will not be intimidated by them. There are not that many of them and I’ll have them done in no time. I’m saying this with all the courage I have in me at the moment and that is more than I had earlier in the day when I was more cowardly.
I’ve done some chores already and did them more speedily than I had anticipated. I’m more efficient than I thought I was. Apparently I had put enough thought into it ahead of time that I went to work in an organized fashion and got them done in the shortest amount of time. Either that or I had them blown up in my mind to a size that was completely out of proportion to their actual size. I think the latter must have been the most true. I do worry about things ahead of time too much.
I had one single sock in the dry laundry, but I know where the other one is. Tyke had stolen it and used it as a security blanket. It had floated around the living room for a few days. He had not chewed any holes in it and I finally took it away from him and put it in the next load of laundry. I’ll have to give him an old sock that smells like me. I don’t really know if I have one. He’ll have to wait until I truly have an old sock. Maybe the next time I have a hole in the toe of one, but my socks seem so sturdy. They are industrial strength socks.
I’m slowly reorganizing the bookcase in the bedroom and finding new places for all the things that Tyke shows the least bit of interest in. It means getting rid of things too. A lot of it is paperwork that needs to be better organized and it’s a good reason to do that. I need to make a box with vital documents and have those safe in a cabinet where they are also handy. I used to have them in a file system, but it has fallen apart due to old age. You always have to decide what to keep for posterity and what can just go. It’s also important to stay in the here and now.
Tyke purposely rolls his tennis ball under the sofa and then stands beside it and barks so that I have to get the African walking stick and get the ball out from underneath. He’s a little stinker. I saw him do the same thing with the ball and the CD rack. He’d get it stuck underneath there and couldn’t get it out without my help, but he pushed it underneath there himself on purpose. He really made the effort to. That dog is much smarter than I give him credit for.
Every time I think the washing machine is done, it goes and does something else. European washing machine sure take their time to run through all the cycles and I put it on a short program too. I want to dry the laundry tonight so that I can change my bed again soon. I have a shortage of pillow cases, because I use four at the time and I can’t find the right size unless I go to Ikea. I haven’t been there in a long time and I should talk my sister into going.
I discovered the window in the spare bedroom was open and had been open for god knows how long. It does explain why it was getting so cold in here so quickly. One of the domestic helps must have opened it and I have a suspicion which one it was. I kept feeling a draft by my legs when I sat behind the computer, but I thought it was because of the cat flap. Since I closed it, it is a lot warmer in here and the heater hasn’t gone on all day. It goes to show you how much energy I could have saved. I’m glad I discovered it before it got really cold again tonight. I would have turned up the heater with it open and have been none the wiser.
I think the washing machine is done and I will go hang up the laundry. It’s dark outside and time to turn on the lights. It’s time to be cozy and cuddle the animals.
Have a good evening!
Ciao,
Nora
June 18, 2010 at 3:06 am · Filed under clothes, domestic help, emails, Gandhi, middle of the night, personal helper, politics, sleep, the queen, Tyke, walks, weather, worries
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Well, here I am in the middle of the night wide awake for a change. I shouldn’t say for a change, because I’m more often awake in the middle of the night, aren’t I? I do make a habit of it sometimes. I slept for a couple of hours and woke up and was as bright and bushy tailed as a raccoon on a food hunt in the suburbs. I couldn’t wait to get up out of bed and get the coffee machine started and turn the computer on. I was ready to live during the night for a while. What the morning will bring is of later concern. Maybe I will collapse, but I don’t care right now. I’m throwing caution to the wind.
I was lying in bed last night and couldn’t sleep at first. I kept telling myself that I had half an hour to fall asleep, but I couldn’t get comfortable. It was too hot with the covers on and then it was too cold with them off. I made a compromise by having them half off. I tried to meditate, but my mind kept wandering to other intruding thoughts, so that was not a success. I tried to make a deal with the Higher Being to show me Nirvana, but that was to much to ask. I finally just went to sleep.
I was awakened by Tyke who was pestering Gandhi. He does pick the most opportune moments for that. When he realized he was caught, he tried to be a little puppy and cuddle up to me in bed. I would have none of that and got up to go to the bathroom, seeing to my dismay what time it was. But then I did not despair and decided to make the best of the situation and to just stay up and amuse myself. There’s always something to do in the middle of the night if you use your imagination.
I answered my emails first and luckily there were enough of them there to keep me occupied for a while. I do try to draw out that process when I have the time for it and because of the time differences, I hope for some responses the same night. It keeps me busy. Sometimes I like nothing better than having a good long chat via an email, especially if it’s reciprocated. Some people are very brief, which causes me to be brief also, but there’s really no reason why I can’t answer in a longer email. I just have to use my imagination.
I always feel so good in the middle of the night. I don’t have a care in the world. Everything that I may worry about during the day doesn’t exist during the night. Not that I have that much to worry about during the day. They are just the minor issues of life. No head breaking things. They’re just little obstacles to be got over. They are so minuscule that they are hardly worth mentioning. They are midges and not mosquitoes or deer fly. Fruit flies too in the green waste basket. They’ve come for the apple peels, but where they come from lord only knows.
Today my personal helper is coming, but my domestic help will not be here. That’s why I need to do the chores. It’s a good thing to have someone check in with me and keep me on my toes. I could slip into an attitude of nonchalance easily and let things slide. It’s good that I know someone will be here to see if I’m holding up my end of the deal. I do have a tendency to put things off indefinitely and never get around to them. I wasn’t always like that, but this seems to be me in my new incarnation. Before I was always walking around with a damp cleaning rag in my hands, even if I was on the phone, especially then so I didn’t waste time. It was a bit neurotic.
The weather is going to be much cooler for the next 5 days. temperatures around 15 C. I don’t mind. It just means wearing more clothes and that is easy. It’s taking clothes off when it gets hotter that’s the problem. I like getting dressed up, so I’m fine with it. It will give me the chance to wear some clothes I haven’t worn in a while. I’m thinking of one colorful, long sleeved dress in particular. I haven’t worn it since I’ve lost weight and I’m curious as to how it will fit me now. There are a few things in my closet that I want to try out since I’ve lost weight. It will be a whole new discovery.
There’s no chance of a right wing coalition, thank goodness, so now the Liberal Democrats will have to form a coalition government with the parties to the left, which is much more to my liking. Which ones they are exactly going to be is not clear yet, there’s to be some major negotiation. I hope for the best and that the parties I trust most will be chosen. Somehow they have to make it work or there will have to be new elections and those may not turn out so well. I hope wisdom reigns. Hopefully the queen will exercise her influence and steer everyone in the right direction. She’s well informed and modern enough to know what that should be and she has her advisers.
I think I will take a shower now and get dressed in my finest duds. It may take me a while to put an outfit together, but I have time. It is early still and the birds are singing. The sun has just come up and the sky is still overcast. Doubtlessly it is cold outside. I will dress warmly when I take Tyke out for his walk.
Have a good day you all.
Ciao,
Nora
March 25, 2010 at 3:46 am · Filed under antipsychotic, coffee, dictionary, sleep, smoking, spell check, telephone, weight loss, welbutrin, worries
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I’m up again after having been asleep for 4 hours. I thought I would go to bed early tonight, because of the missed hours of sleep last night, but it didn’t quite work out the way I had planned. Now I’m awake, somewhat stoned from the increase in antipsychotics, which I do not like at all, and I’ve made myself a cup of coffee to try and sober up a bit. I had no other recourse. I think I will not take the increase again, it is too much for me and it did not help me sleep and for a while I actually felt sick from it and broke out in a sweat.
I think the coffee is helping, though, and I’m slowly starting to feel better. I don’t enjoy drugs to the point that they alter your mind in a negative way and that was the case here to the point of quiet deperation. In my mind’s eye I was calling the SOS line asking them what to do if you had taken too much of something, though not an overdose. In the meantime, I think I’ve solved the problem myself. I was typing emails earlier and making a lot of mistakes in them and it took me twice as long to write them, but now this is going better.
So in the end, the only thing that will have changed, is that I will take one tablet of Welbutrin instead of two, and less is better, right? I have to have the same amount of faith in it that I had in the two tablets and I think I can if nothing negative happens. I’m assuming everything will be well and will see the glass half full. So, I didn’t take my Welbutrin at 6 o’clock and you would have thought that I had expected the sky to come falling down on me. Of course, nothing happened and nothing will, because I haven’t taken it long enough yet. My reaction was funny, though, like Chicken Little.
Don’t you hate it when you hold the mouse and your middle finger keeps clicking on the right button when you don’t want it to at all? It happens to me constantly and I really have to let go of that mouse when I don’t need to hold it, but that habit dies hard. Even when you need to hold it, your middle finger reflexively keeps pushing down that right button, showing that whole little menu that you don’t want and then you have to find a white space to left click on to make it disappear. It’s just one of life’s little irritations.
I just went on the scale, which is something I said I would not do regularly, but I thought, “What the heck, lets see the state of affairs,” and I have lost 4.7 kg. That’s more than 10 lbs. Not bad, eh? I celebrated that by eating a couple of teaspoons full of Nutella. Mmm… Those are Dutch teaspoons, not American teaspoons, which are much bigger and would be dessert spoons here, except that we eat pie and cake with little forks that are especially made for it, and we don’t eat ice cream with them so we don’t need a spoon for them. But if you are an American, and you come to my place for apple pie, I’ll make sure you get vanilla ice cream with that. But if you’re a non smoker, you don’t want to come to my place, because if you spend any time here, your clothes and your hair will smell of smoke and you will find it very unpleasant. So, only smokers please.
I’m being a real slow poke in typing this. Hours have passed since I started this and I don’t know what I do with my time either. Proof reading, because I don’t have a spell check, although I just imported an American English dictionary, but I don’t know what happened to it. I’ll have to figure that out later. I don’t know what else I do, except daydream a lot about what is important in my life and what is not and I think about all the different ingredients and people in it. I don’t ponder and worry, these are very light hearted thoughts. I lightly touch on each subject and linger there for a while. Basically, everything and everybody is okay. Everyone is busy leading their own life and doing a good job of it. There’s not much to worry about, except the little every day things, but even those aren’t real worries. It’s kind of nice, isn’t it? A worry free life?
I’m keeping myself upright now with coffee. I’ve had two cups. I think I will sleep in the morning like I used to do. I may be getting back to my old schedule. It’s not such a horrible thing, because at least I have the quiet nighttime hours to sit and write in. I’ve got the ringer on the phone turned down low, so when I’m asleep, I don’t hear it and I can’t be wakened up. I hardly hear it if I’m in another room. If they are people who really know me, they’ve got my mobile number. If not, it’s tough on them.
For the post with the information about my hypomanic episode and my medication change go here if you’re interested. If not, don’t worry about it. In the end it doesn’t really matter.
Have a good morning when you get up. I hope it’s a bright day.
Ciao,
Nora
November 4, 2009 at 2:43 pm · Filed under advice, chocolate, creative therapy, details, glasses, hairdo, house cleaning, make up, medication, nap, SPN, therapist, worries
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I woke up very clearheaded and sure of myself this morning. My decision was made and I was sticking to it. That was until I started answering some comments that I had gotten to my previous posts and I wonder at the wiseness of discussing my life on line into the minutest detail, because, of course, I get all sorts of advice and that causes me to doubt my own mind and my own decisions. I again feel the insecurity creep in and again feel my nerves stretch taut and I want to reach for my medication and take an extra pill to make it all more bearable. Which I end up doing.
Because I had gotten up early, and because the worrying made me so tired, I went back to bed for a while and woke up at 9 am. I got dressed in a hurry and walked the dog and made cigarettes. Then I hopped on my bike to go to creative therapy where I arrived a bit late, but where everyone was hapy to see me nevertheless. The therapist had been informed about my dilemma and was up to date and very supportive. She talked to me about what I wanted to do and I said that I wanted to cancel my enrollment in the new classes. So we talked about that for a while and she wanted to make sure that I wasn’t making a mistake and then she decided that she would go with me when I went to see the head therapist when I told her this.
The rest of the morning I worked on my painting that is going very slowly, but I was having a hard time keeping my mind on it. We women chatted about other things and everything under the sun. There were no men in the class, which loosens us up to talk about women’s issues more. Having a chocolate bar in the house and not being able to just eat one piece of it, but having one square of it one after the other until it is all gone. Can you imagine a man discussing this? Or what kind of chocolate is best to eat with what kind of filling. And I say pure chocolate bonbons with a creamy filling, but we were divided on that, though we all agreed that pure chocolate was the healthiest to eat.
We drank tea and I had green tea with two sugars in it and it was delicious, although one sugar would have sufficed. I must remember that for the next time. The therapist had a Toblerone chocolate bar and we ate that and some of us had more than our share of it. It had nuts in it and it was good.
At the end of the session the therapist and I went in search of the head therapist who was all ready to go with me to the new class, but I told her that I wasn’t going at all and that I would cancel my enrollment in all the classes. She disagreed with me doing it, but said that the final decision laid with me and that only I could make up my mind about it. She said I acted out of fear and I said I acted out of instinct and she said that she hoped I was right. She also said not to burn my bridges behind me and to leave a possibility to re-enter the program if I needed to. I said I would, but I doubt it.
Then I went to the office downstairs and withdrew officially from the classes, although there was only a secretary who took my message and I’m sure somebody will call me about it. It would surprise me if they didn’t.
In the meantime, I have found some Temazepam that are not as strong as the ones I have been taking, but I only have a few of them and took one this afternoon. I still feel the need to settle my nerves, as I’m not back to normal yet. I will be forced to call my psychiatrist to ask him for some to have to take as needed and I don’t know if he’s going to be happy about that. I will call my SPN and ask her about it. Maybe she can run interference for me. That’s what she’s there for, after all. Not that my psychiatrist is the boogie man.
I had washed my hair this morning and with much stunt work got it to stay in the right place so it looked like a decent hairdo, but then I got rained on when I went to creative therapy and then someone said, “Oh, your hair looks so nice.” I thought, “You’ve got to be kidding.” I looked in the mirror and saw a women with rained on hair, it wasn’t especially attractive. I wore no make up, because I hadn’t had the time to apply any and it didn’t seem to matter, which makes me think I will go for that fresh scrubbed look, or maybe just apply some mascara and not bother with the rest. Since I wear glasses, nobody seems to notice any change in my appearance anyway. Well, except that I wore my cardigan inside out, somebody did notice that, but that was easily solved.
Somebody needs to come and clean my apartment. I seem to be unable to handle it myself. I am snowed under. A day of hard work will set it right, but I don’t have it in me. I need help. It’s something I need to discuss with my SPN.
I’ve got to eat now and take a nap. I feel sleep coming on. I’ll read little in my book and doze off.
Have a good day you all.
Ciao,
Nora
Another Splendid Day 