Lisa Sarsfield Images number 5.

Yesterday morning, at ten o’clock, I made myself a large mug of coffee and gathered all my courage together and sat myself down on the sofa and opened my mail with much gusto. I tore open each envelope, took notice of the contents and dealt with it accordingly. Luckily, I had left all of it for such a long time, that some of it could go straight into the paper recycling box. Other things needed to be filed and still other things needed to be written down in my agenda. I was moving fast and taking care of it quickly and I was done in no time and when I was, I was so relieved that I praised the Lord out loud and said, “Thank You, God, for making it so easy.” I truly was a grateful woman.

I know that this stacking up of my mail will happen again and that I will fight the same little battle again next month, or the month after that if I wait long enough, but hopefully, I’ll keep finding that little bit of courage to deal with it. Either that, or I’ll be hypo manic and I won’t give a damn.

Afterwards, I had another mug of coffee to celebrate and a package of saltine crackers. Boy, how boring can you get when it comes to nutrition and food awareness? When I can’t have something really good, I have to have something really dull and uninspiring, so I don’t stimulate my taste buds into wanting more. Like a whole package of chocolate chip cookies, which are so good and mouth watering tasty and I could eat every day until I am round like a porker and ready for slaughter.

Let’s not think of that.

I went to the out patient clinic for my second appointment for my therapy classes. I met with the same woman, who is the head of that department, and had another discussion about what sort of things I thought might be best for me and she presented me with her offer which, luckily, closely meets my needs. In several classes, people had been leaving, as they were done with their therapy, which opened up spaces for me. So, the timing was perfect and it is all working out very well and I am starting on Monday.

On Mondays I will be taking two units of creative therapy, in which I can do things such as paint and sculpt and watercolor and make collages and do any number of things. It is all creative, so whatever you can imagine having to do with that. I am very happy about this, as I feel that it is something I need to do and I have been wanting to do, but have been unable to on my own. I feel very stuck in this area and it will be good to become unstuck.

Hopefully, by trying several things, I will find that medium which most appeals to me, although I have a feeling that making collages will, as it is patient and colorful work. I like tearing paper and working with inks and watercolors and getting a bit lost in the process.

On Thursdays, I will do something called ergo therapy, which is doing psychological “work” through creative processes that you are instructed in by the therapist. It is also somewhat creative, but more structured and limited in the sense that you do not go your own way, but follow a path that is set out for the whole group, which consists of about eight people. I am also very happy to do this, as I have done this kind of therapy in the past and I know it can work very liberating.

On that same morning, I also have relaxation exercises, which is a run up class to the yoga exercises, which I will do at a later stage. It is a non strenuous class and will be laid back and pleasant. I like the fact that there is no immediate physical effort required and that I can move into body movement easily and get ready for the bigger things at a slower pace.

I could have taken another large unit called Health 4 U, which involved concentrating on the workings of the body and the mind, but I thought that was too much of a good thing to start with and my SPN had warned me not to take on too much all at once, so I will save that for a later date, after I see how I hold up with this schedule and this level of activities.

There is an evaluation after about eight weeks, which you attend with your SPN, to see how things are going for you and if there are any problems and if any changes need to be made that are not obvious yet.

Everything is well organized and led by knowledgeable people, so it should be good. I do have reasonable expectations, but I am a bit nervous, because it means a big difference in my life and I have no idea how I am going to react to it all. My head is in the right place at the moment, but we all are aware of the fact that changes can bring about mood shifts and we are prepared for anything.

Springtime is happening here! My sister and I walked the dogs around the pond yesterday and everywhere the trees have green buds on them that are just opening up. It is such a lovely thing to see! All the buds have two tiny identical leaves sticking out of them, no matter which tree it is. This was carefully observed by my sister. It’s like all the trees are covered in little embryos that are waiting to become real grown up leaves.

The daffodils have popped out of the ground, but the tulips are not anywhere around yet. Crocuses are not yet sticking out of the grass either. They will come, we just have to be patient. First that unpredictable month of March has to be lived through. It will bring its unpredictable weather in the form of storms starting this weekend.

Well, if you don’t mind, my legs and my hands are rather cold and I think I will go find myself a warm place in the bedroom. It is always lovely to go back to bed to the place that is still warm from Eduard’s body. He is just like an oven, he always has his burner on.

Have a really terrific day, oh, it’s Friday, hurray! Ciao…

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The Artful Eye Images number 2.

My unopened mail is sitting on the coffee table. I have “fear of mail.” I haven’t figured out yet why I have this condition called “fear of mail,” but is is a long lingering after effect of my last depression. Feeling so much better now, I should be over it, but each day I eye that stack of mail with much suspicion and dread and leave it unopened, and really people, do you think my mail is very important? Do you think there are bills there addressed specifically to me, or a summons to the court, or missives from the queen? No such thing. There is nothing in my mail that is going to cause me any huge amount of difficulty at all, yet I avoid opening it like it is Pandora’s Box.

So, I have told myself that this morning, between the hours of eight and eleven, I must open my mail and read it and deal with it properly. Somehow, having made myself that promise, or rather, having given myself that order, I feel my stomach tie in a knot, yet I know it is nothing to worry about and once I get it done, I will feel good and the world will not have come to an end, so silly me for worrying about it so much, but yet I have “fear of mail.”

Are any of you familiar with such an apparently irrational fear? What if I were the head of this household and I had to open the bills? God, we’d have our electricity cut off for me not having paid the bill.

Well, I do have my quirks and it is a good thing that I am married to such a stable individual like Eduard, who never shirks his responsibilities and who always is in the same steady mood and who seems fearless like a knight on an unflinching horse who every day rides off to save this damsel in distress.

It seems that between the two of us we have figured out the way for me to live most comfortably and safely with the least amount of stress and with the least amount of complications, except for the mail. Eduard takes good care of us both and I give it the effort that I can and have pretty steady moods and no anxiety attacks, except for the mail, and those aren’t true attacks, they are just ripples and bumps. Eduard is a great human being and if there is an afterlife, he deserves a great place in it.

Anyway, yesterday was a very uneventful day, because I managed, somehow, to sleep in the morning as well as in the afternoon. I purposely went back to bed in the morning to get warm and to sleep some more, but in the afternoon I was reading my book on the sofa and I fell asleep again and slept for two hours. I was a little discombobulated when I woke up with two cats on top of me and trying to figure out which time of the day it was and what in the world I was doing on the sofa.

Once I had that figured out, I had to get up and make myself a mug of coffee, so I had to gently remove the two cats who were heavy with sleep and didn’t want to be moved. I delicately placed them on the floor and they collected themselves and went off to find another comfortable place to sleep in. Sleepy headed cats are the best, because they slowly come to their senses just like human beings do and stretch themselves as if all their bones need to be realigned. They truly are little miracles of nature.

In the evening, I got very upset while watching the news, because there seems to be a division of the Dutch population which has an irrational fear and hatred of anything Muslim and this is whipped up into some sort of frenzy by some right wing politicians, who feed on this fear and do their utmost to climb higher up the political ladder and advance their own causes. I really, really dislike this and don’t understand the gullibility and ignorance of the people and do not understand why there is no deeper reasoning and larger amount of logic and insight.

But there, that is all I will say about that.

It is good to be able to watch foreign news on TV as well, as you get a good feeling for the issues that play in other countries and you very often see that they are the same issues that play in your own country, except that sometimes everybody seems to be inventing the wheel for themselves and nobody looks to their neighbor enough to see how he is dealing with it. Watching international news from different angles is interesting also, because you get different bits of information and different bits of input and commentary.

You all know that watching the news is my favorite TV activity, but lately I have started to watch a program that I had been avoiding because of its subject matters. It is called “Netwerk” and it deals with different political and difficult social issues and I was unable to watch it until recently, because I always felt so hurt and frustrated when I did. Now I have been making myself watch this program, because I think I ought to face the issues and form an opinion on them and I have found that I do that fairly quickly, as my gut reaction seems to be my true reaction to a story and that is my almost final opinion as well, unless someone comes along and gives me more information.

I think, for myself, it is my task to be well informed and to have my opinions rest on good information that I must garner from several sources. I don’t want to look at things from just one point of view, because one point of view is not enough information. A human being needs to be like a judge and hear all the evidence from all sides. The thing I fear most, is to not be well informed, as it can lead to very badly made judgments on very important issues and I think that this is a world wide problem, as we see one quandary after another appear in many countries.

I really do think we need to turn to each other and see how we as individual countries deal with our problem areas, so that we can learn from each other and pick up the best ideas. That’s why the EEC can be so helpful, so that we can learn from one another.

It is a terrible thing when populations live in isolation of each other and yet somehow have to be part of the whole picture and even indirectly interact with one another, if not directly through politics or trade. It is really a shame when we know so little of each other and are so ready with our opinions when they are very often based on a few prejudiced points of view. For example: the Dutch all smoke grass, have free sex and wear wooden shoes in the tulips. Americans are cowboys on big horses and all the cities have gangs that murder and loot and are not safe to walk around in.

Well, I have had my say and I will slowly start winding this down and get ready for another day to start. You see that I have a lot on my mind, but it is not that crowded up there and there is
lots of room to consider all sorts of stuff. If anything, I must ruminate on what is happening in the EEC more and find some websites that will inform me better. I must also visit the BBC News website and see what they have to offer me, as I have not been there for awhile, while it used to be a favorite haunt of mine.

I must have a good mug of coffee and another cigarette first and decide on which images I am going to add to this, because I always save that for last, even though that’s the first thing you see. I decide on whatever mood I am in and on whatever image fits that mood.

I wish you all a very good day and a lot of luck with whatever you are going to do. We’re past the middle of the week and before you know it, it will be weekend again. Ciao…

P.S. Image courtesy of Andrea.

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open.your

It’s still quite early in the morning, but I’ve had my coffee and I’m ready to go. I am overly excited and I have no idea why and I also don’t have the foggiest idea what to write about, so I’ll just let this come as a stream of consciousness and let the words come as they choose to come. Does that make sense? Well, sometimes it does.

Sometimes I am not at all sure of my English language expressions and I write things down and they seem very funny to me and not right at all, but I have nobody to ask and just assume that it is okay. Lately I am really getting my languages screwed up. That is because I am reading in Dutch so much and conversing in Dutch more too, although I still dream in English, depending on whom I dream about and where the dream takes place. When I say I am bilingual, I don’t mean I speak two languages well, I mean I speak two languages mixed up.

Speaking of language, I have this morning thought of two new terms, at least they are to me. If you have become real adept at using the computer you are C.C. or Computer Competent, and when you alter images, like many of us “artists” do, you Digitally Dramatize, or D.D. I like the last one the best, as I have a tendency to like dramatization in everything. That’s the vulgarity in me, liking the big sweeping scenes in movies and novels and liking the big emotional gut wrenching endings. Yes, it is true ladies and gentlemen, underneath this quiet exterior lurks a drama queen.

My husband has just come out of his cozy warm bed to get a glass of juice and I think he was looking for a big dramatic opening himself, but I am too busy typing, so that will have to be postponed to another faithful moment.

I have stolen this picture of a bottle on a beach from another blog and something needed to be done with it that is like a moi moi, but I am not in the mood for that and have just written the message on the bottle, like it asked me to, and will leave it at that. I am not going to tag people and do other complicated things like that this morning, because I am not in the mood for any real serious and responsible activities.

Now, having gotten that out of the way, I must tell you that I am not that good yet at adding text to photographs and that I need a lot of practice, which no doubt I will do one day when I am very bored and I have no other pressing matters on my mind. I can’t imagine when that will be, but we can always hope. To tell you the truth, I am very rarely bored and hardly know the meaning of the word, this opposed to my sister who needs to jam pack every spare minute of the day with activity or sleep and does all of them with gusto, whereas I do everything with the laid back ease of an inhabitant of a Mediterranean country. I think maybe she or I was adopted, although neither one of us tans easily. That would be our older sister then.

As usual, there are two cats sitting on the kitchen counter staring at me as if they are sending subliminal messages to my preoccupied mind. They think they can interrupt my train of thought this way, but it is not going to work. I am going to ignore them, even though I am somewhat facing them and they are persistently looking. Cats are tricky animals and have powers of the mind that will stop a dog in his fast moving tracks and make you pour milk in some dishes and kibbles in others.

Today is just an ordinary middle of the week Wednesday, with the exception that Eduard doesn’t have to work tonight and that he will be home early this afternoon, which I think is just grand. I do like his company, although I do not always let him know this, lest he gets an inflated ego. No, all kidding aside. It is nice to have him home and watch him slowly nod off in his chair above his book. He wakes up when the book threatens to fall to the floor or when I start to talk to him when I pretend I don’t know that he is asleep. We are good company for each other.

A typical scene of us would be one of me laying on the sofa with a book and Eduard sitting in his chair with a book and the dog spread out between us, while the cats sit on the dining table staring out the window. Then we also have the odd passer by who says, “Oh, look at all the cats in the window!” This causes all the little kids in the street to press their little faces up against the glass and peek inside, accompanied by much excited voices, which causes some of the cats to flee to the bedroom, because they think they will be molested by the excited children.

Well now, I think I have run out of things to say, but I am actually thinking of my husband laying in bed by his lonely self and I think I will go back to bed for awhile and keep him company and get my hands and feet warmed up a bit, because it is cold sitting here and it never, never dawns on me to turn on the heater, because that would be such a simple solution and when you are a drama queen you need a bit of suffering also.

So, without further ado, I bid you adieu and wish you a very good day or night, whichever comes first in your part of the world. May all your dreams come true, if not today, then at least in the foreseeable future and keep up keeping up. Ciao…

P.S. Image courtesy of John Mora.

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Lisa Sarsfield Images number 6a.

I used to have a Basset Hound called Baby May, who liked beer very much. I have forgotten how we found out about this, but when I had a beer on a hot summer’s afternoon, from a very good small brewery, out on the veranda in the hot Sonoma sun, she would sit beside my chair and look at me with baleful eyes and beg for some beer. I would pour some in a dish for her and she slurped it up quickly with much delight and would have had more if I had given it to her, but I did know her limit. This beer made her the tiniest bit drunk and I think she liked that feeling. She would sit there for awhile, kind of stoned looking, and finally collapse beside my chair and take a good nap.

What made me think of this, was a comment on someone else’s blog about snails being a pest in the garden and putting out dishes of beer for the snails to drown in. Snails are common pests and if you have many of them, they will ruin your beautifully cared for garden and you will do anything to get rid of them, but most of these methods are not that humane. Some people don’t give a damn and toss them in the road for cars to drive over them and other people put out poison. I remember my father sprinkling salt on them, but they must have been slugs and not snails, and to my child’s mind at that time, it didn’t seem like a horrible thing to do at all. As a matter of fact, I found it kind of interesting.

Children can be hard hearted that way and often it isn’t until we grow older that we get softer and start to care about the suffering of our fellow creatures on this earth. I would have a hard time now hurting a snail, and thankfully, don’t have to do so, because we have very few of them in our bare flower beds.

Anyway, everybody pretty much seems to agree that the dishes of beer seem to be the most humane way to kill the snails, because at least the snails are happy when they die. This is assuming that the snails drink the alcohol and get drunk and go into a coma and die. In reality, I have no idea what makes the snails die and what it is in the beer that kills them. It’s very possible that they die an agonizing death and that they actually drown in the beer and that it is not at all pleasant. So, more information needs to be gathered on this. One thing is clear, we don’t have a humane way to kill snails or other pests yet.

I found the link to the TV Villain on The Caffeinated Librarian‘s blog. She was “Sylar,” whoever he is.

Which TV Villain Are You?

More on Supernatural. Created by BuddyTV

Isn’t that an awful description of the evil side of me? You should all go running and screaming in the other direction now and become friends with some Super Heroes.

Stinking Billy, wrote a post about a female TV presenter, whom he had seen often, because she is quite attractive, but whose name he did not really know and he blamed this sort of hiatus in his memory on old age and the ensuing forgetfulness. I left the following comment on this post of his:

“That’s so funny, I am in middle age myself and am very bad at remembering names and faces and affiliations. I vaguely am aware that I should know someone from somewhere and that I should know their name, but I do not connect the dots well. I think it has to do with not taking enough interest in those people to store up enough information about them. If I cared enough, I would. I think I have a selective memory and subconsciously only store information that I think will come in handy to me. A lot of things roll off me like water off a duck’s back. Maybe this is because of being afraid of becoming overloaded with input and getting some sort of shortage.
I also daydream a lot, that may be another cause. Some bits of information get my train of thought going and I drift off into a whole different direction than the subject was from the start.”

I have always had a hard time remembering names and facts and I have often been rendered immobilized by not being able to retrieve something that was just barely out of my reach in my memory. Something just so elusive, I could almost smell it, but I could not find the pathway back to it. I can’t blame middle age, I have always been this way, I was this way as a child.

I use little tricks if I have to really remember something now and I do it with associating names and numbers with other facts that I know. I still remember my pin code to my bank card from Wells Fargo Bank in the States, because it was the year before The Nazis invaded Poland. I’m surprised I remember the name of the bank, but that has to do with the Pony Express and imagining fast horseback riders traveling across the desert at the peril of their own lives.

When I was visiting my son in California one time, I forgot the pin code to my Dutch bank card and put in the wrong code three times and then my card was blocked and there was no way I could get it unblocked from where I was. Luckily, I could borrow the money, but imagine being stuck without family or friends in another country and no bank card. I didn’t have a credit card, so I would have been up the creek. Now, I would just get a credit card if I were to travel abroad.

I have an appointment with my SPN this morning at nine and I have to make it a point to thank her for the large amount of courage she was able to give me last week. It has really helped me get through the week well and just about all of my anxiety is gone and what little there is at times, doesn’t bother me and is quickly dealt with, and I have been able to reduce the dose of tranquilizers by half. I am just the teeniest bit proud of myself.

Well, I think that just about brings me to the end of my post. Oh yes, I have discovered the most hilarious blogger. She is a real kick in the a**. You can find her here.
I would wish to write with as much humor as she does.

Okay folks, I am off to eat some breakfast and take my pills, not necessarily in that order and then I need to get dressed and made up a little. Maybe a necklace for a final touch.Ciao…

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The Artful Eye Images number 10.

Well, here I am sitting behind the computer again in the light of my Bright Light Energy Lamp, after spending half the night reading other people’s blogs. I have my coffee and my cigarettes and I am ready to go. I only just now turned on the lamp, I was sitting here in the half dark before.

I must say that I have a preference for some blogs, although I won’t tell you which ones those are, and I always feel disappointed when those aren’t updated yet. I like blogs with art and humor, so go figure, although I do appreciate something with psychological depth also.

I am trying to be more neutral in my comments, because I think so very often I get so passionate, but I think, while commenting, I forget about that and write what is in my heart anyway. I suppose blogging and commenting require a certain amount of passion, although it can be done with sarcasm and irony also, and I have seen that done and I have myself commented sarcastically on sarcastically written posts. I do want to try and dim that a little bit, though, and not get so caught up in the heat of the moment.

In the kitchen two cats are trying to drink out of a dish of milk at the same time and I think the more willful one is going to get his turn first, that would be Toby, one of the men of the house. The other men of the house are still asleep, which is fine, as I can sit here and write this in peace and not have to pay attention to anyone else yet.

Ann @ For the Long Run has a fun contest about the County Cork in Ireland and you should enter it and try to win a prize. I’ve already sent in my answers, but it is still open to everybody, so give it a try.

As of today, I am on a sensible diet, which will consist of eating very healthy open faced sandwiches with chicken fillet or cheese and eating cooked vegetables. During my depression, I have managed to gain weight, and I found out about that yesterday, when I finally got up the courage to step on the scales and had a minor heart tremor. I knew I had gained weight, I could tell by the fit of my clothes, but I had been avoiding getting on the scales and finding out how much exactly I had gained, the amount of which I will not divulge here. Needless to say, I am not happy and realize something drastic must be done, because I don’t have that gastric band for the fun of it. I have been eating way to much yogurt lately and it goes in like an eternally parched woman drinking water. Much of it often and it slides right past my gastric band.

I forget that I do not have Eduard’s metabolism and that I can’t eat the amounts of food Eduard eats as often as he does. I am so used to seeing him eat often, that it has become a normal sight and I want to keep up with him and do the same thing myself, but we have different bodies and different rates of burning up the calories.

Speaking of food, The Rotten Correspondent has a very good and easy recipe for chicken here.

I may become a little bit food obsessed in my posts, you’ll have to forgive me for that. I must concentrate on it for awhile and it will be on my mind a lot while I try to get rid of the extra kilos in a month’s time when I go see my Obesitas Specialist. I will be a real humiliation to go there weighing more than I did the last time I was there.

Yesterday afternoon, my sister and I walked around the pond, but because it was a Sunday, there were a lot of other people there with their dogs and my sister’s dog wanted to challenge them all and she kept having to put him back on the leash. It is much better during the week, when there is hardly anyone there and we are going again this afternoon, which will make Jesker very happy, because he does love going there and we enjoy the walk also and it gives us a chance to see how quickly springtime is arriving. We must remember to bring some wildflower seed, as we had talked about last year, and sprinkle it in the meadow at the start of the path.

When I am not watching the news, I watch speed skating, as all the races that are being skated now are important for qualifying for the Olympic Games. We want our best skaters to go and it is really a shame when they are skating on a bad day and they don’t do as well as they normally would. The Dutch team is doing a good job, though, and I think we will be well represented. I think speed skating is exciting to watch anyway, I love to watch how well they skate and how well they keep their balance and how smoothly they go around the curves. They are amazing athletes.

Well, now Eduard and all the animals are up and about. Everybody will come to me and want their morning kiss. So, it’s time for me to end this missive and add some images.

I hope you all have a wonderful day, even though it is Monday and probably the least favorite day of the week. Even so, ciao…

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The Artful Eye Images number 11.

Well, as you see in the post below, I have been a little creative with the non-linear adding machine. Andrea pointed me to the website for it and it was the first time I had tried it. It really could be a new way to create free verse poetry if you worked with the text a bit. I haven’t done that yet, I just wanted to see what sort of raw material came out of it and I think it is rather amusing. There are bits of the text that are interesting and funny and that have potential for making great passages in a poem. I will try more of these and see what comes out. You can take any bits of text and enter them and see what they result in.

Something else I did, was download Fractal Forge, which is freeware that is a fast fractal generating application that you can use to draw your own fractal images with and explore Mandelbrot Set’s branches with.

A fractal is generally “a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be subdivided into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole,”^[1] a property called self-similarity. The term was coined by Benoît Mandelbrot in 1975 and was derived from the Latin fractus meaning “broken” or “fractured.”

Natural objects that approximate fractals to a degree include clouds, mountain ranges, lightning bolts, coastlines, and snow flakes. However, not all self-similar objects are fractals—for example, the real line (a straight Euclidean line) is formally self-similar but fails to have other fractal characteristics.

I won’t even get into what a Mandelbrot Set is, it is too complicated for me to understand, let alone explain to you.

Anyway, I’ve downloaded the program last night, I haven’t worked with it yet, I still have to figure out how to do it, but the download was very fast and the program looks pretty neat. It was Constance Rose who pointed this possibility out to me.

Now I have to tell you that I am not a mathematical person, my knowledge only goes as far as simple algebra, so I don’t know how well I am going to do with this program, but I will hope for the best and assume I will do just fine and throw in some fractals that will make great images, but where I am to find these fractals, I don’t know yet, but I am sure the “help button” will inform me.

I had such a pleasant day yesterday. I really feel like apologizing to all of you who lead very hectic lives and who don’t have time to think about what they need to do next, but my life is simple in comparison. I did a lot of blogging and I did a minimum amount of housework. I could have done more than I did, but it all didn’t seem that important and all of it can wait until Monday, when I am home alone and free to fill in my time as I please.

Eduard went to the library and picked up three Henning Mankell thrillers for me, so I am okay in the reading department for awhile. I had to give up the Julia Glass book in order for Eduard to pick up enough books for both of us, but that is alright, because I would rather read a good thriller now than read good literature and I think a good thriller is good literature. At least in the sense that it captures your attention totally and you are completely wrapped up in the book and very much out of touch with the world around you. Uncomprehendingly, you listen to your husband talk about things that don’t sink into your conscious at all. You just smile and say, “Yes dear,” absentmindedly, to whatever he says.

Isn’t it awful when the phone rings just when you are in a very exciting part of a book, or when you are blogging and you forget to listen to the people on the phone, because you are doing things on your computer instead? Suddenly there is a silence and the person on the other end asks, “Are you still there?” Then you have to be nimble of mind and pretend you have been listening all along.

I think I am eating too much non fat yogurt with bits of fruit in it. As a matter of fact, I am eating so much of it that it is coming out of my nostrils, as they say here in the Netherlands. I just love and adore the stuff and Eduard always makes sure we have an ample supply of it in the house, which I then proceed to eat. I am like an aardvark slurping up ants. I slurp up yogurt. There are, of course, worse things to be addicted too, but there is a limit to anything you can eat, even to non fat yogurt. I just don’t know how to stop eating it, except to not have any in the house at all and then I’ll have to think of something else to fill my stomach with and I know I’ll be just as bad about that food, because I just get fixated. Why do we women always have issues with food, what is this oral fixation that we have? I know that today I will want to eat chocolate chip cookies, because I have been craving those for a week and I don’t know how to get them out of my mind.

I know I’m dead meat if I ever try to stop smoking, I will compensate by eating and it will be awful. Before you know it I will be a rotund woman again, beyond Rubenesque, and my own stomach will get in the way of me when I try to pull on my socks.

Anyway, this is not going to be a heck of a long post. I need to go back to bed and sleep some more, because I have been up for the better part of the night and I think I have some amount of sleep left in me yet. It is also tempting to sit here and think about goat cheese, which I can eat while I blog, you see, I can multi task.

I am going to leave you with very pretty images, but by the time you have come to this part of the post, you have already seen those. Jeez, I can never keep a surprise from you. Well, the source image is a surprise.

Have yourself a wonderful Sunday. Remember, it is the Sabbath and we have to keep it holy, no chores that require a lot of effort, so it is written and so we shall do, or rather not do. Ciao…

P.S. Image courtesy of Andrea.

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William S. Burrough’s & Brion Gysin’s Non-Linear Adding Machine.

William S. Burrough

Generates new text from four separate pieces of text with cut ups randomly intertwined in the Character Chopper every 4 times a space appears.

You will find the website to this Adding machine here, and below is the result of the 4 pieces of text I added from yesterday’s post:

only temporarily shocked under what happens…
and the cats had are all past us. cheese very much. Eduard walk and Eduard vacuumed. and gets it done he knows which way addicted to it and the apartment or taking already come out of hiding again. They are no piece of goat street corner we get Things get way to done that once, but heads screwed on straight buying the Dutch kind, I like Dutch goat out really well and the vacuum cleaner is and not to be knows very well, and that would be cruel “Boo” very loud, but frustrated when all the where we are going. other hand, thinks it smells nice. In fact, long walk, but a sofa in one fell swoop. Eduard, on the which is hard and predictable one, that Jesker walk. Eduard didn’t want is all child’s play do want to know to turn at each slight and they come and let me pick I think that worked slaughtering them.I had no idea cheese is safe in went for a nice and it is better a choice between vacuuming bush and tree pass When we got home, I think I got liked it very much. won’t get off the dare to approach it. from it merrily and Jesker for a long frustrated.
if we know exactly The man is inexhaustible do that. Or, I No, no, such shenanigans Yesterday, I gave Eduard don’t like the way exercise in frustration. I never again. Well, you turned off and even stuck behind the furniture dog and cat hair I have discovered that used to buy French buying new pieces of find vacuuming still an soft and stinky, but and hardly is tired more gallivanting around the me, so I never the vacuum cleaner gets to make the choice think I may have Jesker for a long out as soon as in no time flat it and I keep now he has been and I get very goat cheese, which is I could really scare the deal, because I don’t like the noise our refrigerator. Eduard keeps Eduard was done vacuuming the best end of of it and I confusing otherwise.
it was and ate neighborhood and seeing every Now I have become and very mean of what sort of cheese instead, so I took for Jesker and me So, Jesker and I by in record speed. cover. The trauma is to. We’ll have no We must keep our when he is done. them then and yell

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Awards.

Well, you know about the awards that I still have to hand out. Kris Cahill has complicated matters by handing me another award, so now I really must get the show on the road and hand the awards out today, otherwise I will get bogged down and nothing will come of it. Here is the award I got from Kris:
As you can see, it is a lovely award and I thank Kris very much for it, so I will now commence with handing it out to other people. Okay, after much deliberating and a lot of eyebrow sweat and chewing on my pen, I have decided on all of the awards. So the first one, the above, the “I Love You This Much Award” goes to Frances, Babaloo, Bobbie, Bev, Sherry and Trijnie.

The next award, which is the “Kind Heart Award” as shown below, goes to Omega Mum, Eileen, Diane Clancy, Kaycie, Laurie and Kris Cahill.

And the very last award, the one that got this whole thing started, the “Bloggers of the World Award” goes to the following people: Lisa Sarsfield, Amy, the Rotten Correspondent, Anne, Jo Beaufoix, Sue O’Kieffe, Andrea, John Mora, Marja and Mya.

Well now, haven’t I done a wonderful job dividing those up? I’ve just patted myself on the shoulder for a job well done. Phew! I think I need a very large mug of decaf after that and a very good drag of a cigarette.

And because I am not going to add any artwork to this post because of the awards, I will add this picture of Jesker which is hanging in the Museum of Modern Art in Amsterdam.

I always knew Jesker would have his moment of fame some day. He is such a handsome dog and in his golden years, he is in his prime. He is in the autumn of his life and as good looking as he has ever been. Yes, he is a good dog, he is…

Well, now that I have accomplished this huge task that I had been dreading all along, and which turned out not to be so hard after all, I must find something amusing and engaging to tell you, but I had thought that I would have run out of energy by now, so I am scratching myself on the head, trying to loosen up some entertaining anecdotes to divert you with.

Yesterday, I gave Eduard a choice between vacuuming the apartment or taking Jesker for a long walk. Eduard didn’t want to make the choice and let me pick instead, so I took Jesker for a long walk and Eduard vacuumed. I think that worked out really well and I think I got the best end of the deal, because I find vacuuming still an exercise in frustration. I don’t like the noise of it and I don’t like the way the vacuum cleaner gets stuck behind the furniture and I get very frustrated when all the dog and cat hair won’t get off the sofa in one fell swoop. Eduard, on the other hand, thinks it is all child’s play and gets it done in no time flat and hardly is tired when he is done. The man is inexhaustible and not to be frustrated.

So, Jesker and I went for a nice long walk, but a predictable one, that Jesker knows very well, and he knows which way to turn at each street corner we get to. We’ll have no more gallivanting around the neighborhood and seeing every bush and tree pass by in record speed. No, no, such shenanigans are all past us. We must keep our heads screwed on straight and it is better for Jesker and me if we know exactly where we are going. Things get way to confusing otherwise.

When we got home, Eduard was done vacuuming and the cats had already come out of hiding again. They are only temporarily shocked under cover. The trauma is slight and they come out as soon as the vacuum cleaner is turned off and even dare to approach it. I could really scare them then and yell “Boo” very loud, but that would be cruel and very mean of me, so I never do that. Or, I think I may have done that once, but never again. Well, you do want to know what happens…

How to laugh your head off and to try and not traumatize your animals too much. Lesson 1: Only do it one time, because you would be a really mean person if you did it again.

I have discovered that I like Dutch goat cheese very much. Eduard used to buy French goat cheese, which is soft and stinky, but now he has been buying the Dutch kind, which is hard and smells nice. In fact, I had no idea what sort of cheese it was and ate from it merrily and liked it very much. Now I have become addicted to it and no piece of goat cheese is safe in our refrigerator. Eduard keeps buying new pieces of it and I keep slaughtering them.

The other night, I was home alone and ate the whole piece of goat cheese by myself, I just couldn’t stop eating it. You see how I always get these food obsessions. I always end up liking something very much and then become fixated on it and eat it to the exclusion of everything else. If I could only develop that fixation on raw carrots and celery. I could gnaw my way through a bag of carrots and burn up the calories I was eating at the same time.

In America, if I went to a diner, I always ordered the hamburger and fries with a diet coke. I never ordered anything else and some people thought that was strange, while I didn’t. I was an expert on where to get the best hamburger. I used to especially like the guacamole and bacon cheeseburger. God, I can never eat that again now, with my gastric band. I would only be able to have a bite of it, if someone let me. I bet nobody would let me and I would sit there and drool. Now, I would order clam chowder soup with crackers, that is also very good.

Okay, enough already, I am going to take my medicines now and crawl back into my warm bed where my husband is laying still with his warm body. There is nothing nicer than going back to bed for awhile in the morning.

I hope you all hav
e a very happy Saturday and that all your Saturday dreams come true. Ciao…

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necco.love

Just today, as I am about to hand out one award, I am given another by Frances @ A Carpet Full of Holes. You see how difficult this is all getting now, but I must thank Frances for the award, because it is a very pretty one and I am most thankful for it.

You can all see what a lovely award this is and I am quite taken with it. I need to look at it for a bit and really let it soak in. My, I am lucky aren’t I, but again, there is the difficult task for me to hand it out to other people and you know how hard I find that to do. So, please forgive me if I think about that for awhile, maybe at the end of this post it will come to me and I will hand out the other award too. Some things need their time to incubate and handing out awards is one of those things. I also realize that, the longer I put it off, the harder it is going to be, so I mustn’t hesitate too long.

I had a really good appointment at the out care clinic yesterday, so I am glad that I didn’t cancel it and went anyway. You see what a little bit of courage received from your SPN is good for. It was a long appointment. It lasted for an hour and a half and we really covered a lot of ground. In order to offer me the right kind of therapies, the woman who interviewed me had to know a lot about me and about my life’s experiences and they are many and intense. So, needless to say, many things were talked about, but it wasn’t done in a negative draining sort of way and I didn’t feel bad and sad afterwards for having had to talk about all of these things.

There are a lot of possibilities and she is thinking of putting together a made to measure package where I do different sorts of activities on different days instead of putting me into a specific group. There is, for example, a group for depressed people, which may be a bad choice for me as we move into springtime and possibly hypo mania. It wouldn’t be good to sit there with very sad and somber people if I am rocking and rolling through the day. She gave me a booklet that describes the different activities and I have another appointment with her next week, when we will decide definitely on what I will do. So it all looks good so far.

When I finally came home, I had a good mug of coffee and then took Jesker for a long walk which we both enjoyed a lot and which Eduard was happy about when he got home, so he didn’t have to take Jesker out and he could take off his shoes and put on his slippers and get comfortable.

I took a nap in the afternoon, but because I have cut down on the Oxazepam, I had a terrible dream that was full of anxiety and I woke up quite disturbed and it took me awhile to get my thoughts back to normal. I took the 10 mg Of Oxazepam a little early and then I was alright again and was so for the rest of the day, even when Eduard had to work at night. If I am not comfortable with myself, I don’t like for Eduard to be gone at night, but lately I have been okay with it and I manage fine.

All three of our cats are lovely, but Gandhi is the most affectionate and she follows us wherever we go, because she likes to get petted a lot. Whenever we walk into the kitchen, she hops onto the counter, because it is a good place to get attention and get petted and draw our attention to the fact that new milk needs to be poured in the dish. She is just a very affectionate cat, which is really amazing, because we didn’t get her until she was two years old and the others we have had since they were kittens. Nouri is also affectionate and so is Toby, but they are more independent and go their own way more and are together a lot. Gandhi is the odd girl out and comes to us and Jesker, who likes her best of all the cats, so that is a good thing.

I have found a new weblog by someone who was born in Glasgow, but lives in Norway, and is of Turkish descent, if I am not mistaken. She writes lovely posts and I have read many of her older ones and you can find her here. I do so enjoy finding new blogs, but it does add to my reading list, which is getting longer and longer and if I am also going to be doing these therapeutic activities, I am going to have to manage my days differently. I also do need to get some sleep.

The stress I had been feeling, is completely gone and I really owe that to my SPN, as she talked me out of it completely, so I must remember to thank her for that next week. It is such a relief to feel it gone and to not have this anxiety for no reason. It makes it easier to cut down on the Oxazepam and to not feel that I have to take more of it when something becomes the teeniest bit difficult. I don’t want my inner child to think it can not handle every day events without it falling apart. I must be able to handle the ordinary ups and downs of life that everybody goes through, even though I know that for me that is a little bit harder. That is one of the goals of the therapeutic activities that I am going to undertake.

Well, as you can see, I have come to the end of my post without handing out the awards, so I will make a promise to do that tomorrow and keep you in suspense another day, but I am sure that you will be alright with that. Eduard and the animals are getting up now, so I must close up shop.

You all have a lovely day and enjoy the fact that it is Friday, Yippee! Ciao…

P.S. Image courtesy of John Mora.

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plum.es

After seeing my SPN yesterday morning, I feel a lot better, because she managed, through her patience and knowledge, to restrengthen me with some courage that I had lost along the way and now that I have retrieved it, I do not feel so small and helpless. I feel somewhat empowered again and not so afraid of my moods and the consequences of them and I feel that I dare to undertake more without feeling that I have to suffer all sorts of aftermaths because of them.

So, I am braver and stronger and less stressed and I feel that I can take on a little bit more than I thought I could and be okay with that. As a matter of fact, today I am going to try to lower the amount of tranquilizers that I take and see if I can’t find some amount of peacefulness on my own. Luckily, I never have withdrawal symptoms when I lower the dose, so that should not be any problem. I think it will be alright and I can always take a little bit extra if I need to.

I have read all of my blogs and still keep adding to them. It is probably a good thing that not everybody updates their blog every day, because it would take me twice as long to get through them. I always act as though I need to read them all at once, when in reality I have all sorts of time, of course, but I do like to sit and read them all in one sitting so I feel like I know what is going on out there. I find it very enjoyable to get up so early and sit here while the apartment warms up and I drink my big mug of coffee and smoke my cigarettes.

Sometimes some of the cats also get up with me and come and get some much needed attention and I pet one of them without the others getting jealous or without Jesker getting in the way. He does have a tendency to immediately feel left out when you pet a cat and makes a big deal out of it and gets his feelings all bent out of shape. He is so spoiled!

This morning I have an appointment at the out care clinic at the psychiatric hospital for a first introduction meeting that will lead to me participating in some creative therapeutic group. Since there is such a waiting list, they will first determine what sort of therapeutic intervention I need and will then see if there is room for me in any appropriate group. I have been waiting to hear from them for months and now that I have, I am not quite in the right frame of mind for this, but I talked about it with my SPN and we determined that I should keep the appointment, because we don’t know when I actually get to join a group, it may be a month or two, and who knows what my frame of mind will be then? It will be springtime by then and I have a tendency to be hypo manic in the springtime, so the timing may be perfect.

I downloaded more “borrowed” artwork yesterday and altered it in Paintshop Pro. I had a lot of fun doing that, because I know now which effects work the best and which choices to make. I pretty much have a formula with several options and I can change my mind along the way. Some of the artwork I “borrow” is beautiful and that really helps me make very good altered images.

Eduard is up now and so is Jesker and so are all the cats. All the peace and quiet has ended. Well, it’s not that bad actually. It’s not as if they all come out here and make a lot of noise, but Jesker especially wants extra attention and to be petted by me for awhile and then it is time for me to take all of my medicines and make a new mug of coffee.

Yesterday afternoon my sister and I and the dogs had a nice walk around the pond. We keep seeing the same heron there and he sits on a tree stump in the water and stretches his wings, it is quite a sight. The rest of the time he stands quite motionless and he seems like a stuffed bird.

A few of the trees have green buds on them, which is really early, but the weather has been so mild. Pretty soon everything will get a green haze and it will look beautiful and full of promise. I can’t wait. I think springtime is my favorite time of year, because the weather is pleasant and it is not so hot like it can get in the summertime. I also like the newness of the plants and the trees, the lightness of the color green and the tenderness of the leaves and the blades of grass. It’s the season of the year when people become very enamored and write pretty poetry. Even Eduard says that he gets a little high in the springtime.

I am not going to do the day before yesterday’s award today. I haven’t given it enough thought yet, in fact, I had quite forgotten about it until just now, and I want to have a good look at my list of bloggers. That’s the only drawback about getting an award, it is that you have to subsequently award other people and you always feel that you are leaving someone out.

Right, I suppose that I have come to the end of this post then. It’s been nice sitting here waiting for the day to start, reading all of your blogs and seeing the beautiful art you make. I have to pay some serious attention to my husband and the animals now.

Have a terrific day and I hope you get the weather you wish for. Ciao…

P.S. Image Courtesy of John Mora.

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