Wanky Wooly Wednesday

Lake Wobegon Days.

Firstly, let me do a good deed for two people who made me smile especially wide when I read my comments tonight. All my comments make me smile as a rule, but these two made me smile more than usual and it is so funny that these two people both had the same sort of idea. They are Miss Understood and Stinking Billy who both sent me a silly poem that was just right to end the day with. I would like to give them this special award:

So, please pick it up and feel free to pass it on to others who made you smile today or any other day.

It’s a little past eleven PM on Tuesday night now. Eduard and I just came home from the film house where I leaned on the bar in my usual spot next to the nachos machine. A man and a woman came to stand there and they were obviously on a date, because the man said very apologetically to the woman, “Well, this is not the most romantic spot to drink our wine.” I could have told him that, because I eavesdrop on everybody and everybody feels that way about the nachos machine.

A funny thing happened. A volunteer colleague of Eduard tried to pick me up. He didn’t know who I was, but I knew who he was and I kept silent about who I was, so it was quite funny and we had a very animated conversation during which I was much flattered. His name is Milout and he comes from Morocco and speaks French fluently and his mother makes the best couscous. He talks very excitedly and with much body language and he is obviously an intelligent guy, but he was quite embarrassed when Eduard walked up to him and asked him in French if he was trying to pick up his wife. Milout said, “Oh no, she is your wife, surely not, you must be joking!” I was most charmed by this Arabic man who understands how to woo a woman. You don’t meet many men like that anymore.

Graffiti

Early Wednesday morning. I suddenly had to go to bed, I was overcome by sleep and nodding off behind the computer. That was before I took my sleeping pills, imagine me afterwards.

I discovered something about being wobbly on the bike. I realized since I had become so much calmer, that I did not need that much oxazepam anymore and that it was even starting to make me feel drugged. So, yesterday I cut back my massive dose of 200 mg to a more sensible dose of 80 mg, which is still a lot and suddenly I feel a lot more clearheaded. I needed them when I did and felt fine on them, but now that I don’t need them that much anymore , they make me feel drugged and drowsy. I am going to cut them down to 40 mg a day and stay on that amount, because I think I will always need a little and it is handy when I can increase the dose if I suddenly have to.

So, I am much less wobbly on the bike and can go at increasingly faster speeds now and that is ever so nice, like last night when it started to rain and we made it home by riding our bikes quickly between the raindrops and we hardly got wet. I am still having a tendency to veer to the right, but I feel much more secure now and that makes a lot of difference. I can’t quite say that I raced Eduard home, but I gave it a try anyway. He would always win that race. He’s like Speedy Gonzales.

Roadside Trees.

I saw my SPN in the morning. I told her about my newly acquired insights into my Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and she seemed relieved about that and said she had always been kept up to date about that by my psychiatrist and he had always shown her my emails to him about the subject. I showed her the notes I had made for myself and she asked if she could keep those. She said there is a bit of a waiting list for the personality disorder team, but that she would care for me in the meantime and that there should be no problem with the transfer of me from one caregiver to the next, that is all streamlined.

Actually, for me it is also a relief to have owned up to this bit of myself, especially when I read the various reports and letters about myself that I have always had the copies off in my big organizer. I was so obviously derailed and in such bad shape for such long time and there was such concern for me and my mental state of health. I have so stubbornly refused to see the writing on the wall these past 6 years or so, in the end I only hurt myself with that contrary attitude. It has to do with trusting other people and assuming that they have your best interests at heart.

I see it this way, manic depression is like an illness that you cope with and BPD is like a behavior disorder that you can teach yourself to change in.

Market Stall Shampoos.

Eduard and I wanted to have a cuddle moment yesterday afternoon, but we ended up having such serious talks about all sorts of things and then, worn out, I fell asleep. We are both going through a lot of changes right now and are discovering a lot about ourselves and each other. Sometimes it’s quite scary. I sometimes don’t know where we will end up. I do love him very much and am still very much in love with him. I realize that when I see him in a crowd, like last night at the café and I see him in comparison to other men, and I realize that I wouldn’t want anybody else. “It’s a puzzlement,” as the king of Siam said to Anna.

Oh, I am seeing the physiotherapist on Friday and I am looking forward very much as to what sort of therapy I am going to get. I am secretly hoping for massages, but I should be that lucky, right? “Please massage my back into the right place, thank you!”

I walked to my SPN’s office, which took me 30 minutes, and after that, I walked to the film house for some coffee and that took me about 30 minutes. I tried to walk straight up, but I think I may have given the appearance of a drunk woman. You know how drunk people really do their best to walk like they are stone sober? Well, I looked like that. I could have gotten a ticket for disorderly conduct.

Well, it’s time to hang up. I have to change my music download list. Fo
r some reason I thought it would be interesting to have a French rapper on it, but now it seems that every other song is one of his, so I am deleting him out of the system and I am going to find something better instead, so wish me luck. I was thinking of Linkin Park, but I think they may be a bit too hip for us middle aged folks.

Gotta set my priorities, am I hip or am I middle aged, or am I middle aged because I am hip?

Have a wanky wooly Wednesday and for all of you people who don’t have a queen, I say, try it, you may like it. There are some noble houses floating around Europe who could use a country to rule over symbolically. Then you wouldn’t have such abnormal moral expectations of your presidents. You could transfer all of those feelings to your Royal Houses. They’re good for that.

Ciao…

P.S. One for the road.

Market Stall Fabrics.

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Some Swell Tuesday

St. Servatius Basilicum

I went to see the GP this afternoon. It wasn’t our regular GP, because he has had a car accident and lies wounded at home now and won’t be back until the end of July. We are going to send him a get well card and hope that he is on his feet again quickly. Apparently he has quite a few broken bones. Poor man, what a horrible thing to have happen to you and he was in Belgium when it happened, not that they don’t have excellent hospitals there, still you are far away from home.

So, I saw a different GP, who was very nice and puzzled a bit at first by my story, but then realized that this was something serious, because Eduard was there to back me up and then he quickly ruled out any neurological problems. Then he had me undress and he examined my back and in a voice of horror said, “My God woman, it’s no wonder you tip over to the right, I have never seen a back as crooked as that!” Eduard and he both admired and commented on how crooked my back really was, while I stood there like a fool, totally unaware of anything, because I could not see my back, of course.

It seems that, because of chronic lower back pain, I have overcompensated and my back has grown crooked to take the weight off the pain. I am so used to the back pain that I don’t pay any attention to it, but it does limit my movements. On top of that, because I keep subconsciously trying to straighten my back, my muscles have become all sore on the left side from trying to stay upright, which I never manage to do anyway. Walking crooked has made me clumsy and it also has affected my bike riding skills, because I keep wanting to veer to the right.

I am so relieved that it isn’t anything neurological! I thought I was in for a life long struggle with something like that, that would get progressively worse. Of course, now I am going to have a struggle with this, that isn’t going to clear up overnight if at all. I am being referred to the physiotherapist, but I don’t think it will help much, I don’t have much faith in it. I am afraid I am just going to be a crooked woman, but at least I have an explanation for why it is so.

For those of you who all have great ideas on treatment, I do have to remind you that my insurance does limit the kind of “professional” practitioners I can see. Not every specialty is accepted as being a legitimate specialty. I think acupuncture is accepted, but I don’t think a chiropractor is. They are very few and far between anyway. My sister has crooked hipbones and she finally found some relief with an osteopath, but it was a long and painful and expensive journey and she still has problems.

The GP said for me to use a heating pad on my lower back and we do own one of those, so that will be nice to use, if I ever get up out of this chair. He said I could use painkillers too, such as Ibuprofen, but I take so much medication that I hesitate doing that.

Anyway…

Film Sound Track

The beautiful weather stopped today and rain moved in courtesy of France this time. We don’t owe it to England today, but tonight the clouds have drifted away and left us with the early evening sun shining from the west where it is setting over England one hour later than here. Greenwich Mean Time. All those English people are having their tea now and are arguing about which channel to watch the news on. Are all of you English people having your glass of sherry beforehand too or a glass of port? I used to drink Sandeman sherry, I don’t know if it was a good brand, it was what I could afford. Someday I want to come to England and eat fish and chips with vinegar over it out off a newspaper. Somebody will have to point me to the right spot and share the meal with me, because I can only manage a few bites. And I want to try beans on toast, I hear so much about that!

It’s actually so silly that we live so close to you, but let the Channel and the cost of the English Pound stand in the way. We so easily travel to Germany and France in comparison and it certainly isn’t the language that stands in the way.

I have been to Heathrow twice and briefly had some English money in my wallet when I bought a cup of tea and a bun to eat. I remember that at that particular place in Heathrow they had very ugly carpeting, but this was back in the eighties and it may have been the time for ugly carpeting. I think it was old rose and burgundy in a kind of plaid pattern. It boggled the mind.

All I really know about England is what I learn from literature and from watching very good BBC series. I do like the way English people make such good fun of themselves. You are better at that than any other European nation and it’s the kind of humor all the other Europeans understand and wish they could copy, but can’t. We don’t have that kind of highbrow slapstick. Ours is too common with ordinary oily looking types that don’t have one ounce of class. Or it is very intellectual and only meant to be appealing to a very customized sort of people, who all have gone to university and have money and status or pretend they have. Of course, they have to like this kid of humor, otherwise they will be outcasts. Gosh, even here there is still such a class system when you look hard enough. Eduard and I quite proudly belong to the X-class. Non-classifiable.

Anyway…

Plant

I am going to stop for now. I have to leave something to write about tomorrow.

I am working on my Deezer Sound Spot. I have found more music by female artists and I am eliminating some bands that I don’t think belong with the music I am picking out now. I am having a lot of fun, but it is labor intensive. I will get it just right. If you don’t like a song, just skip to the next one. See you later…

10:30 pm. I have had such a wonderful time on the Deezer website. I have thrown out Rammstein and Pink Floyd and found a whole bunch of new artists, one band by the name of Massive Attack who are completely new to me, but I really like them a lot, because they are a bit odd and I like that. I found some new to me women artists too and I am happy about that, because those are what I was looking for.

You know, it is really a shame that I am not more exposed to really modern music, because I see that I really do appreciate it, but through this website you discover it all, it is no longer hidden away from me. I live such a sheltered live, my god, I need to get out more often, but now I don’t have to, because I’ve got Deezer.

So, all night long I was pulling myself back up into a straight position. Now that I know what is wrong, I am not afraid to do that, but my back does ache, all those poor muscles! But that’s okay, nothing is broken or irreparably damaged,
well, I guess it isn’t. It’s not going to kill me and no limbs are going to fall off. That knowledge makes it easier for me to move around and that should help me. It’s all what you know in your mind that counts.

I am waiting for Eduard to come home. He was supposed to be here 30 minutes ago and it’s not raining so, of course, all sorts of scenarios play through my head. I do have an active imagination, rather call that overactive or hyperactive or extremely hyperactive. Woman, know thyself!

Okay, here is one for the road…

Nameless, because lost original and have no idea what it was.
Actually, I think it was a downtown street at Christmas time.

Well, it is actually tomorrow now, even though it is only 1 AM and Eduard is just safely tucked into bed. He listened to Massive Attack and agreed that they sound a lot like Portishead, which is a band we both like and then he made me listen to Louise Attaque who is a French singer with a lot of joi de vivre and a great band to back him up. I was tempted to include him in my list , but he really doesn’t belong there, so Eduard will have to start his own blog with his own player on it.

I am going to go to bed at some point, just not right now, but I am wearing my pajama’s and my bathrobe. I will get sleepy shortly and start making all sorts of spelling mistakes, which is what I am doing right now, so I better stop and say adieu, parting is such sweet sorrow.

Well, it is properly morning now, albeit still a bit early, 4 AM, but that counts as getting up time in my book. No doubt Jesker will be here shortly to tell me he has to piddle. I’ve got the music turned up real low so I won’t wake up Eduard, keep your fingers crossed. I am taking a real chance, because the apartment is little and I don’t know how far the sound travels.

I have to tell you guys something. When I got the diagnosis manic depressive some 14 years ago in the hospital, I also got, as a secondary diagnosis, borderline personality disorder. I never really warmed up to that diagnosis and for the most part did not believe in it, even though I got lots of literature on it and I could see how it applied to me in many ways. At one point I accepted it grudgingly for awhile, but at the first opportunity rejected it again and declared myself cured of it, if I had had it at all in the first place.

In the past 6 years there have been different caregivers who have carefully brought up the subject with me, but I was always very much rejecting and dismissive of it and nobody ever pushed the subject on me. They were aware of my feelings about it and didn’t want to upset me, but sometimes carefully suggested to look at something from a borderline point of view, which I then didn’t.

Until I asked my psychiatrist for a referral to a specialist team and one of his suggestions was to go join a team of specialists who specifically treat personality disorders, because he thought it would benefit me greatly and, although he knew I rejected the diagnosis of borderline disorder, to read the literature on it again and see if I couldn’t find myself in it.

Well, at first I was indignant and told him so, but then I started to think about some of my own behavior and became curious and got out my big folder with all my psychiatric literature that I have collected over the years. I had literature about the borderline diagnosis too and started reading that while taking notes and when I was done, I realized that yes, indeed, I probably still had that disorder and it was still affecting my life and behavior to a large extent.

I made a list of things of things I still do and a list of things I have stopped doing and emailed that with a note to my psychiatrist and the suggestion that I am willing to look into the specialist team for personality disorders. Unfortunately, I got back an automated response that he is out of the office until May the 4th, so I will have to be patient with that. Fortunately, I am seeing my SPN this morning so I can discuss this with her.

I don’t think it is a good thing for me to be in denial about this. I have accepted the manic depressive disorder and I am doing what I can to calculate that into my life, but there is something else wrong which is preventing me from having a smoother ride. There are too many emotional upsets and dramatics and I am too unstable. The medicine isn’t going to help me get over that, that has to do with behavior and unlearning some things, getting a better grip on myself.

Borderliners rapid cycle too, they are famous for going from one mood into another quickly and changing their minds about issues radically in a short amount of time. They are very quickly upset and become depressed quite easily, as easily as they become quite happy.

So, you can imagine my confusion. I am a manic depressive with a borderline personality disorder and where does one end and the other one begin? Luckily, the medications for the two conditions are exactly the same, so I’m okay there.

Well, it seems I am off on a new mental health journey. I left the literature out for Eduard to read yesterday and we had a bit of a discussion about it, but of course we need to talk to a professional. We will do that when my psychiatrist comes back from his vacation, or where ever he is.

Time for some art.

Still life with plant and candle.

I am having some terrifically creamy Senseo here. I never tire of drinking the stuff, double the pads in a large mug, very strong with low fat milk, no sugar. Oh, I know how to treat myself.

I think I have run out of things to tell you for now. Well, it’s been a lot already. hasn’t it?

Have a swell Tuesday, it is going to be some rainy Tuesday here. Tomorrow is Queen’s day and the poor queen will get drenched and have her pretty hat blown of her head. All the Royals will be blown to bits and get soaked. There are so many of them now, I don’t know who is married to whom and how many children they have. If one or two get blown off to sea, we won’t miss them at all, neither will the journalists that report on the big day. It would be sad for the queen, though.

Ciao…

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Multifaceted Monday

Green Leaf

Very early Monday morning. I woke up, “walked” into the living room, turned on the computer and then sat there like a zombie with my eyes half closed and drool coming out of my mouth. I realized I needed to sleep some more and stumbled over to the sofa, that is literally the word for it, laid down and was instantly asleep again. I’ve stopped drooling and my eyes are wide open and I can even hold on to a thought, so I think I may be awake now.

Jesker has decided that he needs to go out for a piddle now in the middle of the night, every night. He very impatiently starts pacing right beside me and if I ignore him he starts to make urgent little sounds. If I ask him if he needs to piddle, he barks once, so I let him out immediately, so as to not awaken the neighbors. He disappears into the dark, but if I listen carefully, I really do hear him piddle, so it’s not a trick just to get a treat. Afterwards, he goes to his pillow beside the bed and goes back to sleep with not a worry on his mind.That does explain his impatient presence beside my side of the bed when I get up a bit later than usual. My slow middle of the night mind had not put those two things together yet. Duh! I thought he just liked me very much!

Sitting behind the computer is becoming quite a chore with me slouching to the right all the time, but it does not stop me from doing so, that’s how dedicated I am. I actually have sore muscles on the left side from trying to sit up straight. I keep trying to invent new ways to sit in this chair so I won’t slouch, but I haven’t figured it out yet, slouch I will. Eduard timed how long I would last upright in bed yesterday and it took one minute for me so start slouching to the right. I was leaning into two pillows and drinking a mug of decaf, so it was in my interest to stay upright.

I looked at the insert to the medication that was last added and increased to my inventory off, but it didn’t mention this kind of problem as a side effect, so next I will read all the inserts to all the other medications. You start thinking of a type of neuralgia or MS even, but it is too much of a puzzlement to figure out on my own. We just don’t have those kinds of diseases run in our family anyway.

The Street

I used to have a medical book in the States with the most common diseases and I would read it and diagnose myself all the time with having all sorts of diseases. This was before I knew that I was manic depressive and I tended to have vague physical ailments, some of which had real causes and some of which didn’t. Anyway, every week I had discovered a new disease that I had, because I became convinced that I had all the symptoms. I saw that GP a lot and he became convinced that I was a mad woman, thereby missing the diagnosis of severe endometriosis for which I had to have surgery and a bad case of hypothyroidism, because I had cried wolf too often.

Nowadays I tend to ignore my body and be aware of my mind more often and I don’t see my GP that much, although I had to when I developed diabetes from being overweight and saw him when I wanted to stop living and very seriously asked him to help me step out of life with the help of the right medications, which he refused to do, so I had to take what I had in my possession and failed.

He misdiagnosed my problem with my eyes, which turned out to be caused by too much thyroid medication and which I had to solve myself. That bothers me. That’s why I am worried about going to him about my back and I asked Eduard to come with me as a witness to it, because he sees it happening all the time. I am always afraid of being not taken seriously enough.

I diagnosed my own diabetes and just had him confirm it, even though I had come with some complaints earlier about being thirsty and having to piddle a lot, amongst other things, and always being tired. I guess I don’t have a lot of faith in GP’s, but in the Netherlands, you don’t get to see a specialist unless you have been referred by a GP. I should probably see a neurologist if I am not mistaken.

Anyway…

The Plague House

Let’s not get all morbid here, Irene! Really! There are so many other things to talk about. Yes, but are they always on my mind? I have some other kinds of memories on my mind this early morning, because I dreamed about my ex again and I must do that about two to three times a month, so you see how I am not done with that at all. In my dreams, I am always angry at him and tell him all the things I didn’t say when I should have, because he was such a nice guy who wore a big sign around his neck that said, “Please don’t kick me.”

He was so full of incompetence as a partner that it still boggles my mind and I try to solve that in my dreams. Being married to a passive-aggressive person is the worst thing that can happen to you, because they don’t fight fair and square. You aren’t ever supposed to get angry at them, because they are so nice and they do their best and everybody is on their side, because they are such kind and jovial guys. Argh! Stay away from them as far as you can!

Uh oh, I think maybe I am married to a nice guy now, but there must be quite a difference in type, because I don’t feel all suffocated and strangled and I am allowed to get angry and he does reply to me. But yes, I am married to a nice guy, maybe that is why he is being recalcitrant right now. Hhhmmm…this needs further looking into. I mean, I came out of a two year relationship with a not so nice and very self centered person when I rediscovered Eduard. I was ready for nice.

Anyway…

City View

I am going to put this baby to bed, isn’t that what they say in the newspaper business? Or am I way behind the times? I’ve got some thinking to do.

“Slay many dragons, spare not a horse, save all the maidens, boredom is worse.”

Sing this to the tune of “Climb any mountain.”

Ciao, y’all…

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Suddenly Super Sunday.

Demian-2008

Sunday in the wee, wee hours of the morning. Let me start off by saying that I always like getting comments on my posts very, very much. I get emails with the contents of the comments all day long and I always look forward to them and then hate to delete them and leave them up for several days before I do.

The thing is, I don’t like commenting on the comments, sometimes I want to on one of them, but then I think, if I comment on one, I’ll have to comment on all the other ones too and what will I say? “Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment,” or a variation there off?

I like going to the person’s website every day, if at all possible, and being a loyal reader and leaving my comment on their post and I always hope that suffices, but maybe I am breaking all the rules of protocol here, I don’t know.

My point is, that I really do like all of your comments and I am not ignoring them, I read every one of them at least twice. There, I hope I have explained myself enough about that subject. I do admire people who comment on comments, I just don’t have the discipline for it, or the good graces.

Yesterday, I found out that Sonific Songspot is stopping on May the 1st, so I thought it was time to go look for some other way to play music on my weblog. I found several others, but found not all of them that user friendly or with the choice of music I wanted until I got to Deezer.

They have a modern website and lots of music to choose from and they are fairly easy to use. You can download all the music you want and then have it played back randomly, which I think is the fun part, because I listen to it constantly when I am behind the computer. I just open one browser with my weblog on it and then open another browser to do the other stuff.

Now I can’t imagine sitting behind the computer in silence, I’ve gotten so used to the music in the background. It’s mostly just a question of thinking of enough artists that you really like well enough to download and want to listen to regularly. I like women performers, but I couldn’t think of too many quickly enough yesterday to really fill the bill, or my bill, I should say. I like them a little raw, like Amy Winehouse.

Poppies-1928

I sure like the rawness of Rammstein, because if you understand the lyrics they are kind of strange and violent, not in a cheap way, more in a disturbed poetic way, but not for the faint of heart, but because they sing it in German, the message is somewhat softened for me. I am sure Babaloo would feel differently about this, but she is in New York, so we can’t ask her.

I have developed a strange physical complaint. Whenever I try to sit up straight, my upper body starts to sag to the right and before I know it, I am bent over sideways. I have sore muscles in my back from trying to stay sitting upright, because Eduard keeps pointing out that I am bent over sideways again.

I also have it when I walk the dog, my upper body starts to sag to the right and when I ride my bicycle I keep wobbling to the right and as a consequence I am now an insecure bike rider.

When I sit up in bed, within the shortest amount of time I am completely leaning over to the right side and Eduard tries to push me back up. I really am most comfortable bent over to the right and subconsciously I take on that stance. It’s just hard to type that way.

So, I keep sitting up straight again, but it is a real strain on my back and slowly I sag back to the right again. I first noticed the problem when I was walking the dog a few months back, that I did that and in the last couple of weeks this whole sagging thing has started to happen.

Any ideas? Eduard thinks I should see the doctor, although I have little faith in him. I think I will check on line myself and see what horrible disease I have.

Yesterday was Eduard’s first afternoon off by himself. It was a beautiful day outside and he went off on his new bicycle and was gone for hours and came back sweaty and tired. I am not supposed to ask where he has been and he is not supposed to tell me and we did real well, although this is a little tough for us, because we always tell each other everything that we do and that happens to us, but that is part of the deal.

His Saturday afternoons are not open for discussion. He takes a shower when he comes home and changes his clothes and that is it. It’s a real responsibility we have taken on and we have to stick to the rules, neither one of us can break them and I’ll stick my fingers in my ears and start singing, “La, la, la,” really loud if he starts to tell me anything.

I didn’t miss him for the time that he was gone, I was too busy downloading music and making metamorphics and generally having a love affair with my computer, because, man, I do love that piece of electronic hardware (or is it software?). We had to do the trick with disconnecting the wires two more times yesterday, so we probably need a new modem. I can not do without an Internet connection! It is my life line to the world, for God’s sake!

The other day, out on the field, I told a weird woman that she was treating her dog badly and she got her teenage son to follow me home and threaten me. So now Jesker and I don’t go to that field anymore, but we go to a different field, which he likes just as much and he can sniff to his heart’s contend there. Oh, life is full of compromises like that isn’t it?

Anyway, Jesker and I have a different route and it’s okay. At least we are away from the boys playing football and the other kids playing on the field and in reality, this is a better route because we can make it wider if we want. I’ve heard that the woman’s husband is quite aggressive, so I am just keeping myself out of harm’s way. Apparently, she doesn’t have all of her marbles either.

Il y a longtemps que je t’aime

You’ll have noticed that I changed my banner again from the metamorphic of the yellow tulips to a metamorphic of three glasses of white wine. Don’t ask me why I do these things, just now when I have stopped drinking white wine. I liked the yellow tulips, but this one was a little more sedate and it is possible that I will change it one more tim
e, or twice. Yes, I am fickle that way!

I haven’t rapid cycled since Thursday! It was Thursday, wasn’t it? Yippee! Maybe some amount of normalcy is returning to my life. My friend Joost called me yesterday and said that he had been slightly psychotic again, but that he had realized it himself after awhile and had increased his medication and that he was starting to feel a lot better and more normal now. He says we are alternatively normal.

You see, you are never safe. There are always stressors in life that affect your state of mind and make something go haywire. Power shortages, burnt fuses, electric surges, you name it.
Mis-firings. Electrical storms, lightning! Positive and negative charges. It all happens in your brain. That’s the way I look at it anyway. When I am rapid cycling, I imagine a big electrical storm happening in my brain and I have to wait for it to be over. Or sleep and take medication if I still have enough sense left.

Yesterday I started ironing, there wasn’t that much to do, so I started with some of my things first and when I had the most important ones done off that, I stopped ironing and put everything away again. How is that for true dedication? The rest was almost all Eduard’s T-shirts and he has so many of those! He doesn’t even care which T-shirt he wears, as long as it’s clean and ironed. Which reminds me that I have to wash my bathrobe, I am starting to look like Andy Cap’s wife.

Well, I’ve come to the end of my ramblings. I have just caught a glimpse of Eduard who came to drink a glass of juice, but it doesn’t mean anything, he will go straight back to sleep. He probably wore himself out yesterday. Oh, that was mean of me!

Brion’s Ashes

Have yourself a suddenly super Sunday with a sumptuous breakfast at Denny’s. That’s where I used to like to go when I didn’t know about fat and cholesterol and heart disease.

Ciao…

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Satisfying but Silly Saturday!

Starry Night

Friday afternoon, 5:30 PM. Well, I have managed to piddle away a whole other day doing all sorts of things and nothing important at all really. In the morning at 7 AM, I lost my Internet connection and was like Captain Hook without his hook. The help desk didn’t open until 8 AM, so I actually had to amuse myself for an entire hour. I did this by trying to fix the problem myself by removing and reattaching several wires, but that didn’t help.

At 8 AM, the man at the help desk started telling me a complicated story about which wires to disconnect and I told him to hold on a minute while I gave him my husband to talk to who is much more technically gifted than I am. They had a bit of a conversation and wires were disconnected and reconnected and after a while, I had Internet again and that was the most important thing of all. Thank goodness for technically savvy husbands!

What I did after that is sort of vague to me. I was supposed to have gone back to bed, but I never did make it there. I did all sorts of other things behind the computer, but I don’t rightly know what they all were anymore, so I claim partial amnesia.

I did pick out a new template, which is the stretch denim, it being a wider template than the other, but then I spent a long time trying to get it to look as much as possible like the old one. Only the banner changed, as you can see, as I have misplaced the large size of the tulip photograph, so have added the metamorphic one instead. Blowing my own horn a bit here too, no doubt.

I have changed the images on my slide show and first had them in the middle of the page, but then didn’t like that and moved them back to the sidebar. At first I couldn’t figure out how to get rid of the ones in the middle of the page, but it turned out that you just delete them as you would any old post. Now I have to figure out how to add images to the slide show without going through all sorts of hassle.

Charley Toorop

I was busy like this until Eduard came home and he saw the condition I was in and the apartment and he said that maybe I was spending too much time behind the computer, which I weakly protested, since it is only the last few days that I am so preoccupied and obsessed at the cost of everything else. He does have a point though, but I am not ready to change my manners just yet. I need to be a little obsessed a little while longer.

He did have a surprise for me. A new mobile phone, one that closes so you don’t have to deactivate the keyboard every time you stick it in your pocket and it comes with its own built in tunes. I am learning how to use it as the instructions are in German and English, but one of the languages on the phone is Dutch. See how continental we are? Now I want people to call me, so I can hear the tune I picked out. I’ll call myself in a little while.

Finally, after all that excitement, Eduard and I went to bed for our afternoon nap and I slept at least two hours and it was wonderful. I am sure it was very boring for Eduard, but it can’t be helped. It is therapeutic, after all! We did have a huggable time beforehand.

Now Eduard is cooking paella and the whole apartment smells good. He is making it with shrimp and chicken and I am sure that it will be delicious. I won’t be able to eat the chicken, though. I’ll have to eat around it. Jekser is eyeballing the shrimp, because he loves them. He would eat the whole pound of them if we let him, so we gave him some extra kibbles instead, that is much healthier for him.

Monet 1

Oh yes, I have been doing a lot of experimenting with the metamorphics and I am becoming quite contend with them. I am catching on to the possibilities and how to use them. Slowly by slowly, as Irene always goes.

I have to tell you people, there is a lot of difference if I have enough sleep and take my medicines on time. Whenever I become unreasonable and very down, I have done one of these things not right and I quickly need to remedy the situation. The problem is the point to which I am reasonable enough to realize that. Therefor the sign on the coffee table.

Okay, that’s enough for now. I’ll catch up with you guys later in the night or in the early morning. I am still in my bathrobe. Isn’t that scandalous?

Saturday some time in the night, way too early to call it morning.

Peacock

Sometimes you have to break up your own train of thought with an image, but will it work? (This will not make any sense to you, because before this I had a bit of a rant about something and Blogger will not let me put it in no matter what I tried, so we’ll just forget about that and consider it left unthought and unwritten. The god of the Bloggers didn’t want it out there apparently.)

No, it didn’t, so I very leisurely smoked a cigarette and drank my mug of Senseo and that calmed me down a bit. Pretty soon the oxazepam will start to work and I will be doing a lot better. I will no longer rage like a storm in a glass of water. All confined and unable to get out. Now I must eat soemthing. Hhhmmm…yogurt, because there are no cookies.

That tasted good!

Today is Saturday, so Eduard gets to spend the afternoon on his own however he pleases. It’s his time out from all the responsibilities that rest on his shoulders the rest of the week. It’s his mental health afternoon. He doesn’t have to tell me where he is going or where he has been as long as he is home by 6 PM. His psychiatrist thought that this was very important for him, but I had already agreed to such an arrangement and we have the particulars drawn up in a contract that we both agreed on. That way everything is clear to the both of us and there will be no misunderstandings. Eduard needs to feel that he has this small amount of freedom without care for anybody, including me. I need to feel some amount of control by having drawn up the contract.

I can do all of this, as long as I keep on an even keel and my moods don’t start fluctuating wildly, so it is important that I take care of myself well. I m
ust sleep on time and take my medication on time and extra if I need it. I have to be my own best monitor, nobody else will feel as well as I how I am doing, well, with the exception of Frances maybe! She has the uncanny ability to pick up on my moods very quickly.

Here is one last image, a portrait of myself made unrecognizable.

Have yourself a satisfying but silly Saturday with sumptuous weather and now snow flurries!

Ciao…

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Fabulous Funky Friday.

‘t Pothuuske

Thursday evening 10 PM. I started ultradrian rapid cycling at 6 PM and although it came as a bit of a shock, when I thought about it later, it really didn’t. I had an odd day. Got up very early, then spend several hours being completely absorbed in trying to download ring tones for my mobile phone, which I could not get to work at all and I was so absorbed in that, that the house could have burned down around me and I wouldn’t have noticed. I was completely distracted to the point that I failed to pay the proper attention to Eduard and Jesker and just basically neglected them.

Then, foiled in my attempts at getting the ring tones, I went back to bed and slept for several hours, not wanting to push my luck in the sleep shortage department.

I slept for several hours, but instead of getting dressed and cleaning up the apartment as I usually do, I got involved in blogging and did that for several hours. I also organized my images files. Then I drew up a really nice contract between Eduard and me about his one afternoon in the week off, that he gets to spend however he wants, that we were both happy with and got all the spelling mistakes out of that and we copied and signed it.

Then I messed around with my mobile phone again, because now I didn’t have a single ring tone anymore and suddenly I got it to work and now I have about 10 ring tones which is 8 more than I asked for. Well, happy days are here again!

So, I was super absorbed in not my regular kind of jobs and being kind of obsessive about them and feeling like I was kind of in a stupor and having not eaten properly, so when six o’clock came along, so came the very down mood and eating didn’t help. Pretty soon I was in bed crying my eyes out, feeling that the world was coming to an end. I had taken all my medications and luckily I was asleep very quickly and when I woke up I did feel better. It isn’t over yet, but I am getting there.

God

Needless to say, I didn’t get any housework done and things are piling up after one day even. There is dog hair everywhere and the dishes aren’t done and the laundry needs to be hung up to dry. But that will be for tomorrow.

Friday in the very wee hours of the morning. I remember writing the above text and getting so frustrated because of all the mistakes I kept making in it. More than usual I mean. No doubt none of my medications had worn off yet and I thought they had and couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t type anymore. At one point I was even swearing and it does take something to get me to do that! I ended up going back to bed and sleeping some more and I think I am okay now, but I am not sure. I am not sitting here all depressed bawling my eyes out, so that is a good sign.

I just took an oxazepam and my mood stabilizer, because I realized I was a little off schedule with those and every little bit helps, doesn’t it? I guess it really means that secretly I think I am not okay at all, but for now I will pretend that I am. I will pretend that I am brave, even though I am not at all.

I’ll make some art, that will help.

Monet 7

I seem to be using a lot of yellows and greens, I must get over that and try an get into some other colors, or am I destined for these?

Oh Lord, I am trying my best to be so cheerful here , but the point is that I am not.

I have to think, if I were on my own in this world, how would I fix this problem? What would I do?

I would probably first eat a whole carton of non fat yogurt in bed with the lights on. And I would try all the different ring tones on my mobile phone. Then I would turn on the radio and have music and I would take a slew of pills and go to sleep. And I would keep repeating that until I was over it, even if it took weeks.

Somehow that seems like a perfect solution and as soon as Eduard is awake, I will start with that program. I will move the radio to the bedroom and eat lots of yogurt and take pills to sleep with. And I won’t come out until I get over this miserable feeling, except at night to blog.

Well, I’m glad I solved that problem!

Yellow Tulips

Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to read some blogs I go. There is not a sensible thing left in me to write down, except to say that if all is vanity, I am the vainest of them all. All of those in agreement, raise their hands. Thank you!

Have a fabulous, funky Friday and make fists full of dough. With poppy seeds.

Ciao…

P.S. The medication I took has done its job and I feel much better now. In another half hour I can take the rest of it and I should be as good as new. Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind!

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Thoroughly Thrashed About Thursday

Yellow Pepper

Wednesday afternoon 1 PM. Oh, I had such a lovely sleep this morning. I went back to bed a 7 AM, after having been up nearly all night, and I didn’t wake up until nearly noontime when the phone rang and it was my sister who wanted to take the dogs to the pond. Much as the day beckoned with beautiful sunshine outside, I didn’t go with her, but very leisurely drank a mug of coffee and very slowly took my time to wake up properly. That was lovely in itself.

Today is the first day, since the radical increase in my mood stabilizer, that I actually feel totally calm. It has been increased by a third on Saturday and I think I am reaping the benefits from it now. I am still sitting here in my red bathrobe and actually give a hoot about getting the show on the road. It is all okay with me, in a little while I will get dressed and look pretty for Eduard, who is home already, because he has to work tonight.

Frances has given me a very good name for the images I make that I have been calling incompletes, she said to call them metamorphics and so I shall, because it is a very good name. Another name she suggested was organics, which also would have been appropriate, but since I have metaphore in my blog name now, I go with metamorphics, although I agree that they look very organic and alive somehow. Maybe biotronically so.

Egyptian Shield

It’s been a real challenge making these and remembering what I did right and what doesn’t work. Sometimes I make the same mistake three times, before I remember what I am supposed to do. You can see, I am not big on taking notes, but leaving it all up to chance.

I wish I could share my feeling of serenity and tranquility with you. I am on a smooth sea between storms. On the Pacific when it really is passive and peaceable. When dolphins swim and tumble along side your boat. That is not a fantasy, I have really seen that happen when I was out deep sea fishing in Mexico. The sea was blue and so was the sky and I was not seasick one bit.

We never did catch that marlin, but the trip was fantastic and I won’t ever forget it. It was like being in a book about a woman set out to sea who would never come back.

I find that in the United States I was much closer living next to nature than I am here, especially when I lived in Northern California in Sonoma County. There was nature in all of its glory all over the place and I felt like I was one with it and that I was as organic as all the earthy objects around me. The sea, the sea, like Iris Murdoch wrote. It was everywhere and ominous and beautiful and also terrifying. And the hills that were like hands that held you and the cows that grazed at the bottom of them in the fields. The lonely light houses and the whales that passed by in the near distance, so alien from us and yet so familiar, as if they were our cousins. Did they know that, that we revered them?

And then all the rivers that ran through the landscape and one, the Russian River, that ended in the sea and where you could find beautiful smooth pebbles on the beach. My son and I collected those. We were typical pebble collectors, walking bent over, silently, lost in common thoughts, picking out similar pebbles, watching them dry to less lively colors and spitting on them to get the colors back.

Dish with Pebbles

Well, now I need to make myself pretty for my husband and do some work around here. See you later.

Wednesday evening, elevenish PM. I went to the film house with Eduard tonight. He invited me specially and I sat on my usual barstool at the end of the bar where I can overlook everything, right next to the nachos machine, and no, I am not tempted at all. I drank cappuccinos and cola lights and ate all the cookies that came with the cappuccinos, because I forgot to eat dinner. What do I mean, I forgot to eat dinner? Well, it simply slipped my mind. I was going to eat some yogurt, but then forgot all about it.

There was a good atmosphere in the café tonight. The bartender played good music and when the song “Brown Sugar” from the Rolling Stones came on, he turned up the sound and the whole place rocked with middle aged people who became nostalgic for their youth.

I talked to a woman who belongs to the local neighborhood committee and she was very committed and political and inebriated, but very smart, and we didn’t have so much of a dialog as well as a monologue. I listened to her talk to other people in the course of the evening and I think she should run for some local office, but stay off the wine. What really amuses me, is how serious the other people took their conversations with this obviously inebriated woman, so she must have been still making sense. It always amazes me when people take themselves and each other seriously when they have been drinking, because I think the bullshit ratio increases with each glass consumed. I refuse to have serious conversations with people who have been drinking. Having said hat, I realize that both my husbands like their glass of alcohol.

I am sorry, but you are all my captive audience to my experiments with my metamorphics, so here comes another one. I have to keep trying until I get really good at them. So there:

Yellow Stone

I am now going to bed with some lovely food and my lovely husband, to sleep no less, because that is all I am good for at this time of the night. I’ll see you in a few hours.

Thursday morning in the early hours. Isn’t it teriffic? You go to bed and close your eyes for several hours and then you get to get up again and have a nice mug of coffee and a cigarette and start the day all over again. I think it is mighty amazing how that works. Of course, I do have to remember to sleep some hours during the day, like I did yesterday and that worked out beautifully with my mood remaining steady all day long. Yes, I have to keep reinventing the same wheel over and over again.

I am having quite a correspondence by email with my psychiatrist about me switching to the specialist team. He is a stubborn man, but I am a stubborn woman and I can be very persistent and I am not afraid to not spare the man’s feelings, although I do try some diplomacy, but if it doesn’t work? I go s
traight for the jugular. Eduard has an appointment with him this afternoon at 5 and it was my intention to go along and sit and wait in the waiting room in case I am needed for some part of the conversation, but it is supposed to be about Eduard and not me. So, that has to be very clear. It is very important that Eduard has this conversation and it has to be all about him and his concerns.

I have some very good short cake biscuits and I am trying to decide if I am going to eat those now. There is much temptation and I want to say, “Oh hell, just eat the damn things!” So, I probably will. That will be good with a fresh mug of coffee. Let me leave you with a last metamorphic and then I am off to read everybody else’s blog. I must and I will do it! I have been neglecting you people and I have my excuses, but I am falling way behind on what is happening out there. I hope nobody got married or divorced or had babies while I was preoccupied!

What will we call today? Thoroughly Thrashed About Thursday. How is that? The day before liberating Friday.

Moss.

Here we go, ciao…

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Wobbly and waggly Wednesday.

It’s Tuesday afternoon two PM. I have about 30 minutes before I am off to bed with my extra pill and a glass of hot milk for my therapeutic rapid cycling prevention nap. I saw my SPN this morning and we decided that this is the best thing to do for now, and to not even wait for things to start getting bad, but to just go to bed when the time is about right. I also talked with her about getting on a team with a psychiatrist and SPN’s who really specialize in mood disorders, which she and my psychiatrist don’t, so I think I will switch teams.

I want to be on the team with the most expertise and the most knowledge of what can go potentially wrong and what to do about it. You’ll remember me talking about this last year and not making the move ultimately to spare my psychiatrist’s feelings, but this time I am going through with it, because I have to think of myself first and foremost. I’ll get an angry sob story from my psychiatrist, but I’ve run out of patience with him.

Right, gotta go.

4:30 PM. Oh, that was a lovely nap. The dog woke me up, because there was someone at the door, or I would have slept right through that. The mailman always delivers packages here if the neighbors in the building aren’t home, so we are the official package pick up place. Luckily, we are very trustworthy people!

Right, where was I? Oh yes, the special mood distorder team, which I definitely think I belong on. I think it is only my psychiatrist’s ego that has kept me from it so far. At any rate, my SPN is going to discuss it with him, because she also seems to think that this is where I really belong, that patients should always be placed inside the specialty groups, as they more and more stream line the care they are given. It makes sense to me, doesn’t it? I challenge anyone to give me the definition of the words ultradian cycling and then I’ll believe them.

After I saw my SPN I went to the filmhouse , where Eduard made me a lovely cappucchino with chocolate on top and he gave me some money to go and buy two more short sleeved T-shirts at M&S fashion, so I got a army green one and an orange one, very fashionably cut. These are fitted stretch T-shirts, so now I think I am all set fot this summer, except for a bathingsuit, which you wont see me wear for all the money in the world. Well, maybe for that much I’d do it, but only for that much. Eduard is on his way home. He had a school film showing this afternoon, but now he doesn’t have to work this evening, so that will be nice and cozy. That will give us some quality time together and I am all for that. He just walked in and now has taken the dog for his walk. The dog was beside himself with joy, he always is when he sees Eduard, as we all are. Except that I don’t jump up and down and run around in circles and make funny noises. I do other things.

Eduard has made a new sign to put on the coffee table. It is laminated and says, “This is ultra rapid cycling, take a pill and go to sleep!” The old sign wasn’t sufficient anymore and he made a new one at the suggestion of my SPN. It is sitting right were I put my coffee mug and it is never to be ignored and always to be obeyed and if Eduard points at it, I am to do what it says immediately. Hopefully, I will still have enough sense to figure it out on my own. I never want a repeat of the other night, that’s for sure, because that was like going through a little hell. Or a big hell, if you please.

Well, I have to go and watch the news now and be an updated citizen. It’s what I do for my country!

Sometime after midnight. I kept falling asleep on the sofa last night, so Eduard sent me to bed at 8:30. It was wonderful to lie down and put my tired body to sleep under the cool duvet.Right now I seem to covet sleep and I am very happy for it, because for a long time it wasn’t like that. I avoided going to bed and going to sleep, as if sleep was my enemy and being awake and alert was my greatest duty.

Not so anymore now, I can sleep like a babe in the woods and have the nicest dreams which all pertain to me being a member of the royal household and being on very easy terms with the present queen. We all wear evening dress a lot and lots of jewelry, but tastefully so, as if we date back to Edwardian times. Hhhmmm…very interesting!

Those are my queen dreams, which I regularly have. I also have my pope dreams and I am not even catholic or very religious, but I dream I am an insider to the Vatican regularly and hang out with the pope as if I am an intimate friend.

I dream of other world leaders too, but I am very disrespectful of George Bush. Do you think I may have visions of grandeur? Or does it have to do with being somewhat hypo manic and euphoric? It is true that at times I don’t feel like an ordinary human being at all, but that I think of myself as someone special for whom doors ought to be opened and red carpets ought to be rolled out.

Hence this regal image, which was made of a portrait of queen Beatrix who is 70 years old this year and may possibly abdicate in favor of her son Willem-Alexander, which would give us our first king in a very long time. His daughter Amelia, is going to be our queen when her time comes. The first born inherits the throne, be it boy or girl.

The best thing about the Paintshop Pro fuctions is the undo button, you can undo any stupid mistake you made and get back to what you liked originally and start over again and there is a lot of trial and error, believe me! Sometimes something so gruesome comes out that I shudder at the result, but then I think, “Undo, undo!” Thank goodness for that! I am not a quick learner like Eduard is, for intsance. He has these kinds of things figured out much quicker than I do.

Well, much as I hate to leave you, I must go read some blogs, because I have been remiss in that and I need to get caught up. What shall we call today? Wobbly and waggly Wednesday? Teetering on the half of the workweek Wednesday? Is Friday yet in sight Wednesday?

You all have a terrific day no matter what you call it. Be good, for goodness sake, don’t wobble too much or you’ll fall over and make a dent in the pavement. That goes for you hardheaded people.

Ciao…

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Terrifically Tumultuous Tuesday.

Monday afternoon 4:15 PM. Eduard and I were brainstorming this afternoon about how to prevent another ultradian rapid cycle and of course our minds quickly turned to the sign that Eduard had made for me last year. The one that said, “Take a pill and go to sleep!” It was not just for fun that he had made that sign, as I was having troubles similar to the ones I was having now. I said, “But Eduard, If I go to sleep, that will mean that I get to spend so little time with you, because you have to work tonight!” Well, his solution was to go to sleep along side me and then we would still be together.

So at 2 PM, I took an extra pill and a glass of hot milk and in the shortest amount of time I was asleep and I slept for two hours, very deeply, and I feel amazingly refreshed now and well rested and not all that stressed. So you see, there was a good reason for that sign still laying on its place on the coffee table, even though I was ignoring it most of the time and just dusted around it or gave it a good wipe every now and then. It had become so much part of the things that decorated the coffee table that I had stopped paying attention to it.

I will now take a nap every afternoon, come rain or shine, come hell or high water, even if I have to turn off the phone, especially then. Anything is better than going through the ultradian rapid cycling and I must break the pattern of it. I don’t get enough sleep as it is, so this is a perfect solution.

Time for some art in celebration of that:

I hope that this is the solution, but with my feeble minded memory, I seem to remember that last year it was, so it is worth every effort. I must give it a go, because tomorrow morning I am seeing my SPN and I want to tell her I booked a little success at least. As it is, I have enough negative things to tell her and where to start?

I have deleted my psychiatrists home phone number and mobile phone number from my phone’s memory, so I will never be tempted to call him after hours and have him get exasperated and impatient with me like he did the other day. It’s better just to go the regular route like all mental patients do and call the 24 hour hot line and have me deal with the professionals there. They are knowledgeable and as well informed as my psychiatrist is and not short of patience because I am calling at an inconvenient time. The last time I talked to him, I hung up on him, so you can imagine what our relationship is like now. It was either that, or start calling him terrible names while I was in the middle of an ultradian rapid cycle.

Time for some more art:

I find that adding the art takes care of whatever stress I am feeling at the moment. They are just little points of stress, but bothersome anyway. Like flies buzzing around your head that you have to keep swatting at.

I am staying home tonight and will probably go to bed early. I am not going to the filmhouse and be a fixture on the barstool at the end of the bar in the café. I figure someone else can do that for me tonight and maybe some other nights as well. It’s time to let go of things and people and not hold on so tight. I have to learn to relax. I have to sleep more. I have to close my eyes and just go to sleep more…

Monday evening 7 PM. Eduard has gone to work and I am trying not to be sad about that. Of course, if it was op to me, he would not go to work at all, but spend all his time with me, just talking to me and holding me and cuddling with me. I suppose you could say that I need a large amount of attention and love. I am like an insatiable man in the desert, who has not had anything to drink for days. I know it is not quite healthy to feel this amount of longing for love, but it is sort of like pining away for your loved one when you are first in love. You remember that feeling.

There is an incredibly stupid program on TV called Lingo and only rather stupid people are allowed to be on it as contestants. I am using it as background noise. The public hollers and screams every time a word has been guessed or the right ball has been fished out of the container. A descendant of Freud, a psychiatrist herself, said that there was a vulgarization of society taking place. I very strongly suspect she is right. Everything is reduced down to the lowest common denominator.

Toby just came walking in with a dead bird. Its body was still limp and one of its feet was missing. It was a sparrow. Poor thing, I didn’t know Toby was such a good hunter. I took it away from him. No need to have a torn up bird all over the livingroom. I am not squeamish but practical.

I like making these incomplete images, so I am going to make another one.

I am going to make myself a mug of decaf Senseo and watch a boring medical program on bloody injuries at the first aid clinic. Yippee! My thrilling life by Bitter sweet chocolate Irene, I must come up with a better name like that!

Tuesday morning 4 AM. I had a wonderful night’s sleep, although I did get up at 11 PM thinking I should work on this blog, because that is when Eduard came home and he woke me up inadvertently. I can be so stubborn then and think I ought to be up and about, when it is so obvious that I belong in bed sleeping, but there is one of us born every minute and the world is filled w
ith people like me who are stubborn and fool hearty.

Well, I am truly done sleeping now, I am sure of it and I can sit here with my Senseo and not have the mug slip from my fumbling feeble fingers. Try to say that ten times really fast! And my cigarettes! Oh, my God! They taste so divine! Sincerely sensuous soothingly smelling cigarettes. All of you ex-smokers are shaking your head now and thinking, “Who are you kidding girl? Those are cancer sticks you are smoking!” and I look at all of you meat eating omnivores and shake my head also, so we are even. I specifically didn’t say carnivores!

This morning at 9:30 I have my appointment with my SPN and I can’t wait to see her and inform her about the sleep therapy. It worked again yesterday evening when I was sitting here by myself feeling my mood shift and off to bed I went, after I had taken all of my medications. It was only 8:30 and I was sound asleep in no time, trying to read a book about a new sort of psychology, but getting nowhere fast, because I am not absorbing what I am reading. Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t! When you do, it is hard to concentrate on what you read.

Don’t you just love how I drop everything and go to Paintshop Pro and make a new image to post here? It breaks my train of thought and I don’t know what my limit is on how many images I can place in one post. I suppose it depends on the size of them and I always make the original image the smallest size they can be. The lighting and the colors are still a bit tricky, but I am getting the hang of it a little bit. There is also the angle of the light to consider and the intensity of the light. Sometimes it is just the way I want it and sometimes it comes close. I must experiment more with the mirroring effect. Oh, so much to do and so little time!

Anyway, as I was saying, in the morning my mood is always excellent. I am always feeling that life is still full of promise and that all is safe and well. The big bad world is still outside the dark windows. Birds sing their early morning song, little aware that they are prey for our cats, who need collars with bells on them, even though Eduard doesn’t like them for some reason. Nouri will go crazy if you try to put a collar on her, but the other two tolerate them fine. So, coming up , 2 collars with bells on them.

Well, I suppose I’ll go read some blogs now that I still have the time and the energy, and take my pills, for goodness sake.

Have a terrifically tumultuous Tuesday without any tedious tasks in them. Tedious tasks such as fighting dragons and rescuing damsels. We did that last week. Time for new challenges.

Ciao…

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Measly Monday Maybe.

Sunday afternoon 5 Pm. I am starting on the post that I will place tomorrow. I just woke up from a much needed nap and I am still groggy from it in a nice way, I’ve got a nice mug of Senseo and a cigarette and those are my main requisites, so off I go.

I started off this morning, after writing my last post, by sending an email to the other woman telling her that she needn’t turn up for the date that afternoon, because I had decided that three people were too crowded in my marriage after all and that I had been blackmailed into thinking that there could be. Then I went to bed and went to sleep.

When I woke up, I found the Outlook program open, with a snotty answer from the other woman, and a note from Eduard to say that he had gone for a bike ride. He returned shortly after that and I could tell by the look on his face that he had read the emails and my blog, but he wasn’t angry, he said he was just tired of the whole thing and needed time to think things over.

We did end up discussing a few things, such as my rapid cycling rage and the connection it had with what was happening in the relationship and sometimes I get so discouraged, because people think I can turn a rapid cycle on and off, when it is really like being on a tiny raft on a huge stormy ocean with mountain high waves and you are clinging on for life and screaming for help and you are lost until the storm abates and then you are perfectly safe again.

My younger sister thinks I have gone mad by destroying the contract and thereby throwing away my safety. She envisions a future for me in which all sorts of horrible things will happen to me, because I am mentally unstable and that I will not make it on my own. She and my older sister thought it was better to choose for the situation with the other woman in it and have the safety of the marriage. I tried to explain to her how I was literally physically and mentally unable to do it. She thinks I am an unpredictable nut and she told me that she is not going to pick up the pieces when I fall apart. That it will be my responsibility.

It is really nice when your own family has such hope and faith in you. I am not going to call her for help again. Not even when I am on fire and I can’t put out the flames, as a figure of speech. My older sister will react similarly, as they both thought I should think of the safety of my marriage first and the relative security it offered me. But I was unable to do it in the end. I have to live with my conscious first, after all.

Other people will react differently, depending on how well they know me. I think you all know me pretty well, in all my moods and ups and downs. Today I was so unhappy about being a manic depressive, and the role it plays in my life and the people I know, that I contemplated suicide. Everybody is always bringing it up when they discuss any long term plans with me or when they discuss my past with me, as if I have a pre-soiled future and a soiled past. Eduard has been bringing it up a lot, as if it explains something about now and I thought that I was doing so much better these past four years.

Time to make some art.

Early Monday Morning. I thought it was time to say something about manic depression, specifically ultra rapid cycling which is something I do, so I copied this bit of text from Wikepedia, although it doesn’t say a heck of a lot about ultradian rapid cycling, I will look for more.

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Bipolar disorder is often a cyclic illness where people periodically exhibit elevated (manic) and depressive episodes. Most people will experience a number of episodes, averaging 0.4 to 0.7 a year with each lasting three to six months, although some will experience only a single mood episode.^[7][8] Late adolescence and early adulthood are peak years for the onset of the illness.^[9][10] These are critical periods in a young adult’s social and vocational development, and they can be severely disrupted by disease onset.

Rapid cycling, defined as having four or more episodes per year, is found in a significant fraction of patients with bipolar disorder. It has been associated with greater disability or a worse prognosis, due to the confusing changeability and difficulty in establishing a stable state. Rapid cycling can be induced or made worse by antidepressants, unless there is adjunctive treatment with a mood stabilizer.^[11][12]

The definition of rapid cycling most frequently cited in the literature is that of Dunner and Fieve: at least four major depressive, manic, hypomanic or mixed episodes are required to have occurred during a 12-month period.^[13] There are references that describe very rapid (ultra-rapid) or extremely rapid^[14] (ultra-ultra or ultradian) cycling. One definition of ultra-ultra rapid cycling is defining distinct shifts in mood within a 24–48-hour period.

All forms of bipolar disorder have a defined biological nature, apparently stemming from a common genetic factor that leads to generational morbidity. Twins studies and general population studies show that there is an increased chance of de
veloping a bipolar Disorder when either a general mood disorder or a specific bipolar disorder is present in family members. Further research is being conducted to discriminate any environmental factors that may also play a role in onset and severity of bipolar disorder.

Ultradian states in bipolar disorder are faster than rapid cycling states which imply four or more mood episodes in a year.

Rapid cycling mood states are characterized by more than four mood states within a year, and may occur within the space of a few weeks. These oscillations or cycles may last a few days, or even weeks. While current understanding looks to the presence of both states simultaneously, there are anecdotal cases where situational factors can produce distinct and separate periods of depression or mania/hypomania, switching back and forth. Because there is very little research into this particular form of cycling, the terminology is borrowed from the more established research into the formal Bipolar I or Bipolar II categories.

Ultradian cycling is characterized by cycles shorter than 24 hours. Ultradian Bipolar Disorder is productively treated by the same mood-stabilizing medications used with Bipolar I and II, though dosing may be difficult due to situational stress and other environmental factors.

Researchers are working to understand the brain chemistry basis of mood states in an effort to better diagnose and treat bipolar disorder. This research shows the promise of finding biological determinants for Ultradian mood states.

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So, you see how I behave and what I say and think and what I do is very much influenced by what mood I am in. Either by the longer term depressed or hypomanic moods, or by the shorter ultradian moods as they can make quite a powerful impact on your life, you swing from one mood to another in just a few moments and, in my case, an ultradian rapid cycle mood lasts for about 6 tot 8 hours. The problem is, that once you are in one of these moods, that is all the reality you know. There is no other reality that you can remember and refer back to. Your viewpoint then is the only one you know and the only one you can apply to any decision you make. You become very distraught and upset and desperate and can’t see the forest for the trees, until, quite suddenly, the mood switches off again and you are back to normal as if it were a storm that quite suddenly stopped raging and suddenly there is silence and clarity.

Ultradian rapid cycling moods are usually triggered by a stressful situation that may not even be obvious to the people around the victim of them. They can be small triggers or big triggers. There can be a delay in the reaction to them, so the mood seems to come out of the blue. Ultradian rapid cyclers are very sensitive to change and do not like for things to be altered too much in their environment. They like things to be predictable and in a state of sameness, because they are easily triggered.

Okay, end of lecture, those of you who had their eyes closed, can open them now.

No matter how I look at the clock, sideways or upside down, it is still the wee hours of the morning and I can’t fool myself one little bit. I have been unable to read any of my books before I go to sleep at night. I sit and eat my yogurt and drink my hot milk and then doze off without even touching the pages of the book. It is all very strange. My mind wanders and keeps going over the events of the past weeks and tries to make sense of it all. It just comes up with more questions than answers.

Those of you who have read me for a longer time, will know that I always referred to Eduard as my lovable husband and he has been nothing but, for all the years that we have been married. He has been good and kind and caring and has always gone over and beyond the call of duty in caring for me when I needed extra help when I was struck down with one of my depressions. He never complained, but cheerfully picked up whatever duties I no longer could perform and did them excellently.

He never stopped loving me, even if sometimes I made it very difficult for him to make him keep loving me, not that I did that on purpose, of course. He was always loyal and true and caring and stuck by me no matter what, even when I turned into a fat porker from all the medication that I was on.

Every time I tried to kill myself, he thought I was worth saving and called the ambulance on time, even when it would have been so much easier to just let me go. When he knew I didn’t want to live anymore.

The man had a lot of patience with me and it paid off. For the last four years, I have been doing really well and I have become more the Irene that he used to know, the one he married, the one he had been loyal to all along.

I don’t know what is wrong with Eduard right now. He has changed and I no longer claim to understand him. He is like sand slipping through my fingers, but I want all of you to know that he has always been a lovable husband, more than any other husband I have ever come across. People always told me how lucky I was and I always made sure I told him that, so he would know. He is not an uncaring selfish human being, at least, he wasn’t until September last year. He met the wrong person, who put some ideas in his head and he was willing to believe them. He became converted to a point of view that I had never heard him utter before. It’s like he met a guru and now he believes everything that guru tells him and my words and my reality are no longer valid.

Well, for all the sadness of it, I will end this here, because now I feel like shit. You must remember that my husband was a very nice person, he was one of the good guys. He was well loved by many people, especially by me and now he is turning away from everybody.

Ciao…

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