The Artful Eye Images number 14.

There may come a time in the future when I will not write a post every day, but I have not gotten there yet and I still feel the need and inspiration to do so. A lot of other people do as well, but there are people on the list of blogs that I read every day who do not post every day and this is just as well, because if they did, it would take me twice as long to get through them and I would sit here all day long and do nothing but read other people’s blogs. Not that that would be such a bad thing, but you do get saturated after awhile and I think that the amount of blogs I read now is just enough. Any more would put me over the edge and sometimes, when I add new ones, I get rid of some that I hardly read.

I must reiterate how much I like blogs that are humorous and a bit sarcastically written, but humorously most of all. Some people have an enormous amount of wit and understatement, other people are so brazenly funny that I sit here and giggle out loud.

Some blogs are about very serious subject matters and those are good too, because life is that way, it offers you a variety of ingredients and it isn’t all laughter and lightheartedness.

One and the same person can show you different aspects of her/his life, but usually the people who are really funny, stay funny, no matter what. Sort of like they have a stiff upper lip and they will not be beaten down by anything. I don’t know if it makes their lives easier, it is just a different approach.

I am not going to qualify myself one way or the other. I just tell about life as it happens in a more or less better mood, with more or less inspiration.

I actually, for a change, slept for nine hours last night. I don’t know how I did it. I went to bed early, because Eduard was working, then I got up at 1 am and I thought I was awake, but I wasn’t, I was drunk with sleep and went back to bed and slept until I was really done with it. It really feels good to sleep for such a long time and I haven’t done so in ages.

Barb @ Life in the Sunshine has made me a very special award because she is just a very special person and I am very grateful to her for it and will treasure it always, that’s how special it is:

That’s “The Jesker Dog Walking Award” and I can’t give it to anyone else, unless you have a black and white cocker spaniel named Jesker. Thank you, Barb!

Jesker is reacting to the pain medication really well, although we give it to him sparingly, but it really does help him. Now that we know what is wrong with him, we realize that there are certain movements that he makes to compensate for the bad mobility in his knees. The way he walks with his hind legs and the way he gets up and down. We had just thought that was the way he moved always since we had him. We wrap his pills in a slice of luncheon meat and he wolves them down without any problem.

Even though I slept most of the night, I know that it really stormed and rained and I wonder if that was the other storm that they had warned us about. It is dry outside now, but the wind is still blowing hard like it did yesterday morning, when I had to go see my SPN.

I was riding my bike westward, into the wind, and sometimes I didn’t make any progress at all. At one point I started having a mild asthma attack and I don’t know if that was from the exercise or because there already is pollen in the air, as I know there is. It took me a long time to get my breathing back to normal and I spoke to my SPN out of breath for the first ten minutes.

She and I really make a good team and every time I see her, I come away from there knowing something valuable about myself that I hadn’t quite figured out on my own yet, or I knew it, but I hadn’t said it out loud yet to anyone. I shed a tear, now and then, but they are healing tears and I am always okay when I leave there. She is a bright woman and she helps me very much.

Oh, I want to tell you about a site I discovered through another blogger. It is called Six Sentences and what you want to do is send in a very good story in a paragraph that is exactly six sentences long. Go there to read the stories and find out what you need to do to send in your entries. I think it poses quite an exciting challenge.

On Monday morning, our hot water heater stopped working, so we have been without hot water, and also without heat, because we have radiators. Yesterday afternoon, a man came to fix it and it worked for just about 20 minutes after he left, but then it stopped working again. I have had to boil the water for the dishes and it has been a bit cold in the apartment. Luckily, the washing machine heats its own water. Luckily also, Eduard doesn’t have to shave, because he has a beard. We can’t take showers, but we are very clean people and that is not so much of a problem. By the way, it takes two kettles of hot water to wash the dishes in.

Something completely different, sometimes when Eduard rides his bike through downtown, he sees people running with a weekend bag in their arms in the direction of the train station. He always asks them if they need a quick ride and if they say they do, he has them hop on the back of his bike and he races to the station. He tells me about this and I noticed that they are usually attractive young women that need these rides, but Eduard assured me that he picks up attractive young men also. I suppose older, less attractive people don’t run, but just figure they will be too late to catch their train. Eduard is such a good Samaritan.

Which reminds me of that Ethiopian marathon runner, Haile Gebre Selassie, who will not run in the Olympic Games in Peking, because he says the air there is way too polluted and he will concentrate on the Athletics World Cup instead. Isn’t it intriguing that so many really good long distance runners come from African countries? It is like speed skaters are supposed to come from the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries. You wonder why? When we had Johan Cruyff, we were all supposed to be good at football.

Well, now I must go and get dressed in several layers of clothing, because I am quite cold sitting here. It’s not like I am like the animals with a nice
bit of fur around my body. The wind makes it cold in the apartment and the man to fix the heater isn’t going to be here until the afternoon. We won’t let him leave until we know he’s really fixed the problem. We will ply him with cups of coffee and cigarettes.

You all have a wonderful Wednesday. Keep praying to the Goddess of Spring. March is a difficult month always when it comes to the weather, it is often unpredictable. If I had cows, I wouldn’t put them out to pasture yet. Poor things would get all wet and cold and shiver and make sour and watery milk.

Ciao…
P.S. Image courtesy of Andrea.

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Lisa Sarsfield Images number 8.

It was supposed to rain yesterday, but it actually turned out to be not such a bad day and I was able to hang up the laundry to dry outside for the first time in a long time. When I went outside, all the animals came with me and they acted like they were a bunch of little children on a school outing. It was as if they had not been outside all winter. The cats took up strategic positions on various items on the patio and watched me at work and Jesker peed on everything that was somehow connected to the earth. It seems that we are a united group and that we must all move in unison and do all things together. When I was done hanging up the laundry, the whole herd followed me back inside.

Here are the cats laying on our bed:

I sat on the sofa with my mug of coffee and a cigarette and I was petting Jesker at the same time. I said to him, “Do you want to go for a walk? Do you want to go with me?” He became very excited and started pacing back and forth meaning to hurry me along. I said to him, “You first need to put on your shoes. Go ahead and put your shoes on.” He sat down and looked at me kind of funny, with his head turned to one side and his ears perked up every time I said the word shoes. He is a smart dog.

I meant to go for a long walk with him, but I had to cut it short, because for the last couple of days his hind legs seem to be bothering him. This is a problem that he gets a few times a year and we think he maybe has joint problems sometimes. We have given him pain medication in the past and it always clears up after several days, but Eduard is going to the vet with him today to have him looked over and maybe get some anti inflammatory medication. We will not be going for any sort of long walks this week, I think.

We did walk past the horse in the paddock and although Jesker is still a little scared of him, he stood his ground when the horse came trotting up to the fence in a real threatening manner. Jesker hardly flinched and I think the horse was a bit disappointed at getting no reaction. I am sure the horse is a bit bored and needs some entertainment during the day.

Just like the people in England, we are expecting a big storm today. It is supposed to rain like crazy and have very strong winds and we are advised to stay indoors and to not stand under any trees for fear of dropping limbs. Not our own, but those of the trees. Hopefully, the storm will have lost some of its power when it comes to us in the southeast here, but it is supposed to be a real doozy. It is not good to be out at sea today and I suppose this would not be the best day for a walk on the beach. You may get blown about a bit.

Toby is over his cold and Eduard is just about over his and I am very happy to say that I have not caught it at all. I am such a lucky person and I don’t seems to catch the germs that go around. I must have a very good immune system.

Maggie May has tagged me. She wants me to tell you seven unusual or peculiar things about myself, so I will put my thinking cap on and see what I can come up with, since I think I have just told you five and six unusual things about myself. I wonder if there is anything left to tell you?

1. I love the taste of meat, and I like pork especially, but I have a bit of a conscientious problem with eating it, so I was in a bit of a quandary. Luckily this problem has been solved by my gastric band, which does not allow me to eat meat anymore, except for fish, and I don’t really have a problem with that. So, I can say I am a vegetarian, but my conviction stems from need as much as from principle.
2. When I was a child, I wanted to be a grown up, because I did not like being bossed around and belittled by the grown ups in my life. I felt that, for the most part, they were incompetent and I vowed to be a better adult than they were. I don’t know how well I’ve succeeded, but I sure as hell have tried my best.
3. When I ran track, it was the first time in my life that I got private and public recognition for something I was good at. That felt good, but I also disliked being liked for a talent I had, because I wanted to be liked for who I was and not for something I was good at. It seemed somehow false and this prevented me from continuing to be a track and field star.
4. I was very excited about my first day of high school, but got insulted by a teacher in front of the whole class for a triviality and this sort of set the tone for the rest of my high school years. It could have been a lot different.
5. When I first got my driver’s license, I was afraid to drive on freeways and got everywhere I had to go by using regular streets no matter how many stoplights there were and how long it took me to get to my destination. One day, I decided to be brave and got on the freeway, drove two miles, and got off again and then I was over my fear of them.
6. Before I had children, I didn’t know how to cook and I worried very much about being able to feed them and I thought they might not like my pork chops or my hamburgers or my soggy vegetables. I need not have worried, because sooner or later everybody learns to cook and your children at first gag at everything you put in front of them.
7. Because my first marriage was such a failure and ended in a much waited for divorce, I thought I was not good at relationships and would be unable to have a good one. Being married to Eduard for nearly 15 years now has proved that theory wrong and I am very happy about that. It has done wonders for my ego.

Well, there you have it, seven peculiar things about me and really, once you get started, you can go on and on about yourself. There is really no end to it.

I am supposed to tag other people, but I am not going to do that, knowing some people specifically do not like to be tagged and I will assume that, if you like this moi moi, you will pick it up and run with it of your own accord. So, go ahead, I dare you to! Be brave like me!

Stinking Billy asked me in a comment yesterday, how I came to write such good American-English.

Well, Sweet William, a long, long time ago, I was a secretary for the purchasing department for a company called Honeyw
ell in the lovely town of Emmen in the small kingdom of the Netherlands. An impressive American university student was there also for six months on a study project and he decided that he was in love with me and asked to me to marry him, to which I unfortunately answered yes, unfortunate, because I had no idea what I was letting myself in for and I was young and inexperienced and not at all ready to be separated from my family and friends.

Nineteen years, two kids, many dramas, much heartache and some joys of life later, we were divorced. It was hard. Then, on one of my journeys to Europe, I rediscovered Eduard, who had been my best boyfriend while I was in high school. Sparks flew, fireworks went off and love grew and we were engaged and then we were married and then I was back in the Netherlands, speaking bad Dutch and good English.

I have now been here for more than fourteen years and have become a proper Dutch woman again and have shaken the dust of Californian suburbia of my boots. I have left behind me all that is middle class and narrow and have come back to my roots, which are socialist and classless. My Dutch has again become much better, but I still like to read and write in English, as I find it to be a language in which you can express yourself in a myriad of ways with a myriad of word choices. That’s why Shakespeare got it so right.

I hope that has answered your question. It has been a dubious pleasure answering it and I have gone about it very light footed.

This also brings me to the end of my post, as I think I am all well and done. Or don’t you say it that way? Sometimes there are doubts and lately I have been mixing up my languages.

Well, today is Rotten Monday, although in truth there is not that much rotten about it, so don’t let me fool you. It will just be an ordinary day with ordinary occurrences, except for that big storm, which isn’t here yet.

Have a wonderful day slaying prehistoric monsters and other fantasmorgisms. I don’t think that word exists, but I am letting it stand. Ciao…

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chick.flick.one

I pour milk into the dish that sits on the kitchen counter for the cats and every time I walk into the kitchen, I check to see if I need to pour in more. A lot of times, I don’t and it seems as if they don’t drink any at all and I don’t see them drinking any, but then, suddenly, I walk into the kitchen and the dish is empty and I haven’t seen any of them drink the milk, so it is a mystery to me. I think they have me all figured out and they secretly drink milk to trick me while I am specifically not aware of it. It’s a little game they play to see if I am paying attention. Cats are really smart that way.

Sue O’Kieffe was showing her latest doodle and discussing crayons and that made me remember being a child and how much I disliked crayons for drawing and coloring, because I thought they were so unhandy and inaccurate and far inferior to coloring pencils and I thought it was a cheap solution made up by some grown ups to keep kids happy without the expense of making proper pencils.

It seemed that with crayons, you never could draw precise lines and circles and you couldn’t color properly within the lines and I thought it was all a big scam. I don’t remember my mother investing in them that much and I am sure I must have let her know very early on that I didn’t like them. We did always have watercolors and we liked them as much as, if not more than, coloring pencils. We learned how not to use too much water and how to get very thick colors and how not to mistakingly dip your brush into your glass of lemonade, as we were always very disappointed when we did, because we weren’t always sure if we would get a new glass of it.

Anyway, we always had lots of paper and coloring pencils and watercolors and we were always, at least I was, creating things; either plain old drawings or paintings and posters, or costumes and crowns and masks. Back then, it was assumed that, as a child, you made you own stuff and nothing was store bought and we all had to be ingenious and figure things out on our own. A lot of fun was had and we joined the neighborhood kids in projects such as making our own kites.

I have very fond memories of this time of my life, when we lived in an old neighborhood in the city of Utrecht, where there were lots of families with kids my age and there was always someone nice to play with. There was a huge sense of loyalty amongst the children that lived in the same street and we played all sorts of games together.

That is one thing that I noticed yesterday afternoon, when I went for a long walk with the dog through the neighborhood. Because it was Saturday, you would have assumed for there to be lots of kids outside playing, but this was not the case. I saw some mothers with their toddlers on the playground, but that was it. It seems that kids don’t play outside en masse like we did back then.

Connie Rose is an artist who hand spins and dyes her own materials and weaves her own products and supports herself through these arts. To see her products you can go here and here. She also writes a more personal blog and in her latest post she describes how tough it is to support herself as an artist, which I am sure all you other artists will empathize with.

I think, first of all, as a woman alone, it must be harder than when you are in a relationship, but if I am wrong about that, I stand corrected, because I have hardly been a single woman myself and can not imagine very well being one. I like the steadiness and security of being in a relationship, but it is very possible that there is a lot of steadiness and another sort of security when you are single and self sufficient emotionally.

I think that when you are an artist, and you depend upon your art as an income, life must be a bit scary, because you are so dependent on the fickleness of fate and the taste and the pocketbook of the public. Connie makes beautiful things that I would all love to own and I would recommend anyone to go to her websites and see for themselves how pretty they are, but, of course, they are completely hand crafted items and she can’t give them away for a song and a dance.

Being who I am, and having the disorder that I do, I will probably never have a chance to financially support myself, no matter how sweet and well meaning I am. I am very lucky in that I am married to a very kind man, who does not mind supporting me and who is contend with how much of an effort I put into my share of our life together, but imagine me being a single woman, with or without a talent, and having to make it on my own. I shudder at the thought and I tip my hat in admiration at every gifted woman who does.

Yesterday was International Women’s Day and I didn’t really realize that until I read about it in the paper and even then the significance of it didn’t dawn on me until I went to this site.

Believe it or not, in the Netherlands, there is a large percentage of women who are not being taken seriously enough yet and who earn less for the same kind of work than men do. Apparently people still think that a job for women is only a job and not a career, because they’ll have babies and not take their work seriously and work limited hours and therefor not be so dedicated as a man is who will work long hours and overtime. “The little woman” will in the end choose for her family and in the end, it is always the man who is the main provider.

So, there is work to be done still and there is also this tendency still to look down on women who choose to stay home for a couple of years to raise their children and not participate in the employment market and this will mean a low entry level job when they return, as if they have been living in a vacuum chamber and have been sucked dry of all knowledge. Someone wrote that more of a value needs to be put on parenting skills.

Then there is this movement that dictates that men need to be in touch with their manliness more and that women should be more in touch with their femaleness and I think it is all a guise for getting us back into the more traditional roles and we will be moving backwards. Don’t get me started!

So, I guess I want to say to Connie Rose, you h
ang in there and be proud of yourself! Although I admit that I am speaking from a somewhat privileged position.

Well, that’s about it for me for today. It has also been a privilege talking at you, because my lips do move as I type, so I am having somewhat of a whispered monologue.

Oh yes, today is that blessed Sunday, the day that is almost as good as Saturday. Actually, yesterday we had beautiful weather and Eduard was able to go out on his motorcycle and make some Belgian roads unsafe, dressed in his bad looking leather jacket with zips and buttons. I, on the other hand, stayed home and was a good housewife.

Now it is time to take my pills and return to bed for awhile.

You have yourself a lovely day and don’t overdo anything, today you don’t need to slay dragons. Ciao…

P.S. Image courtesy of John Mora.

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one.wax.wing

Hello, all you sweet wonderful people. How are you on this bright and beautiful day? Aren’t I full of it, because I have no idea what sort of a day it is going to be, because it is still quite dark outside and I think the weather man predicted rain. But, I can pretend, for now, that it is going to be a bright and beautiful day until the opposite has been proved.

I am sitting here quite comfortably, quite full of myself, with my mug of coffee and my cigarettes and I am as happy as a cow on an Alpine meadow in the summer sunshine. Why this is so, I can’t begin to tell you, but you’ll just have to take my word for it and assume that I am full of good cheer and that I am looking forward to the day as if it is my birthday and I am expecting many expensive and well chosen presents.

No, it isn’t any kind of special day at all. It is just an ordinary Saturday and this is just an ordinary early morning hour, but I have a butterfly in my brain and it is tickling me. I think it is a Monarch butterfly and I am feeling like a queen. Well, I am sitting here in my regally red bathrobe, so that is very appropriate. I left my tiara at the cleaners, so my ordinary everyday crown will have to do.

If you want to know what the every day peaceable and serene Irene is like, I suggest you go here and listen to this bit of beautiful music and you will get a very good idea of how my soul normally feels and how my mind conducts itself. Promise me that you’ll be good and do this.

If you want to know the other side of me, the more rowdy side that is not so peaceable, but more riotous and noisy, than you must listen to the bit of music here. Promise me you will also do that.

Now, if you have done that, you will have a very good idea of how I am put together. The noisy bit of music is but a mild example of what I consider riotous, as I did not want to confront you with the really wild stuff, lest you get a really loud ear full. I also really like this one.

Now, when I am really feeling anxious and depressed, and I want to express that in an art form, I would give you the following painting to look at:

On the other hand, when I am feeling especially peaceable and serene, and at one with the world and all the living and inanimate objects in it, this detail of a famous mural would come very close:

So you see, all your states of mind are expressible in some form of art and I am sure that I could find others. There are probably even gardens or landscapes that would express them, such as a mighty roaring sea or a peaceful green meadow.

Anyway, Maggie May discussed at what point you would throw your food out if you found something objectionable in it and I answered in a comment that I would if I found anything worm like in it, but that I would just pick out a fly or a spider. I would also object to a stranger’s hair, that would really turn me off.

Here is a link to gross things found in food, if you are interested, some of these are false claims made by people who put the stuff in the food themselves.

I once bought a bottle of Seven Up and there was part of, what I think, was a dead mouse floating in it. I tossed the bottle, because we lived in the mountains at the time and it was a long trek back down the hill to the store. But, you know, sometimes you really do find odd things in food and I would rather not have my prepackaged food analyzed by a laboratory to see what is really in it. It may come up with some unexpected surprises.

Once we were sitting in a German style restaurant in California and a cockroach walked across the wall right above our table. It was a big sucker too. The owner was a sweet old German gentleman who was later murdered in his restaurant by a couple of thugs.

Not to be sidetracked at all, of course, but yesterday Jesker and I went for two long walks, because in both cases I decided that we needed the exercise very much, because I had eaten a lot of cookies. Now I have sworn not to eat those anymore and Eduard is under order not to buy them when he goes grocery shopping, but to only buy non fat yogurt. Eduard is such a kind hearted person that he always tries to please me and buy something that will make me happy, but for me that is usually the worst thing I can have in the house. (By the way, there are many, many calories in cookies!)

So, Jesker and I went for two long walks and I think we will do that again today, as it does feel good afterwards, because I really feel like I have accomplished something and Jesker enjoys it so much, and because he is going to be eleven years old soon I think the exercise is good for him.

Your Birthdate: September 7

You are an island. You don’t need anyone else to make you happy. And though you see yourself as a loner, people are drawn to you. Deep and sensitive, you tend to impress others with your insights. You also tend to be psychic – so listen to that inner voice! Your strength: Your self sufficiency Your weakness: You despise authority Your power color: Maroon Your power symbol: Hammer Your power month: July

What Does Your Birth Date Mean?

Well, my dearest most wonderful people, what else do I have to tell you? Today is Saturday, but you already know that, and Eduard has two days off and that is always a good thing, because he is suffering from a cold and it will be nice for him to sleep in this morning. He doesn’t seem to have that awful flu that is going around and that some of his colleagues have and that is making them stay sick for a long time. They return to work feeling miserable. Eduard is only allowed to hug me and kiss me on the cheek, because I am not planning on becoming sick myself, I do not feel like it so much!

Eduard is a pretty hearty fellow, though, and manages to keep on working hard in spite of his cold. Yesterday he hauled around so many films that he came home with sore muscles in his arms. He is in super physical shape for someone his age, I think he easily has the body of someone ten years younger.

We won’t talk about my body until about eight kilos have been lost and will never be found again. Until that time, I refuse to regard my body as anything else but redundant and inexplicable. It is a subject not worthy of lengthy discussion.

Now, in the meantime, my legs and hands have as usual grown cold again. But you know what they say, cold hands, warm heart, at least that is a saying here. I remember my mother saying this about me many times, so I have always had the tendency to have cold hands. Poor Eduard who has to suffer from my touch in the wintertime.

Okay, that’s about all I have to say today. I will now go and take my medicines and make myself a tall glass of warm milk. It will be good to go back to bed for awhile longer.

I hope you all have a terrific Saturday and that the weather treats you kindly. Ciao…

P.S. Image courtesy of John Mora.

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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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John Mora Cat.

Mother of God and all that is holy in the universe, it is in the very wee hours of the morning and I have been up for hours. I watched one day end and another one begin and still I am sitting here stubbornly glued to the screen, my fingers poised over the keyboard and my brain deluded into thinking it is a totally different time of day and not thinking it ought to go to sleep at all. Yes, it is true, my built in biological clock has gone completely bonkers and is so out of kilt that it now thinks I only need short one hour naps to get through the 24 hours that make up my day and night.

It is interesting to see under which conditions I write my best post. Right now my brain is slightly anesthetized by coffee and chocolate milk and I am actually in need of some nutrition, the kind that comes in the shape of cookies with chocolate bits in them, but we don’t have any of those in supply, so I must come up with an equally satisfying alternative. While my brain is considering the alternative options, I will just sit here and drink my decaf and write down my thoughts. Pickles! Nah…

Your Love Element Is Metal

In love, you inspire and respect your partner. For you, love is all about fusing together for one incredible life experience. You attract others with wit and a bit of flash. Your flirting style is defined by making others want and value you. Greatness and optimism are the cornerstones of your love life. You may let go too easily, but you never get weighed down by your past. You connect best with: Earth Avoid: Fire You and another Metal element: will control and smother each other

What Element Is Your Love?

I just threw that in, because for a minute there I didn’t know what else to do. My mind took a momentary break and then I go to this site and take random tests. The thing is, that they are very easy to do and there is no wrong answer and the outcome doesn’t matter, because they could tell you anything and you would just have to believe it or not. It’s all for fun.

While I was blog surfing earlier, one blogger challenged me to another Book Meme, but now I can”t remember who it was and, besides, I have already done two and I don’t know if I am up to doing three of them and tagging more people. Maybe if I had a book in Swedish or Norwegian I would do it, because that would be a challenge for you as well as for me.

My sister and I have been walking the dogs around the pond every day this week when she hasn’t had to work, so old Jesker and I have been getting our exercise. I love the way Jesker ambles along as we make our way down the path through the trees. He is such a low to the ground dog and he sort of shuffles along with his nose to the ground, never looking up, but always inhaling all the different scents he picks up. He is indistractible and only has his mind on two things and that is sniffing and leaving his scent on bushes and trees, until not another drop comes out and he lifts his leg for naught. He doesn’t plan ahead carefully enough.

Yesterday, Eduard and I totally ignored the fact that it was Valentine’s Day and that was not hard to do, because we are not bombarded with commercials to buy your loved ones diamond rings or boxes of heart shaped chocolates. I haven’t been downtown, so I don’t know if the shop windows paid special attention to the fact that it was Valentine’s day, but generally, not a big deal is made out of it, although I can see how this idea of making a big production out of it will blow over from America and all the merchants will want to make a good penny out of it and cease the day. All these holidays blow over from America and we have to start celebrating them too, such as Santa Claus at Christmastime and Halloween and the Easter Bunny. It’s not as if we don’t have our own perfectly good holidays. It’s a shame to see it happen, why do we have to give up our own traditions to celebrate artificially imported ones?

I just realized, that I am not being very funny and I think that is because I am actually getting a little bit tired, which is good, because it means that in a little while, I will go back to bed and hopefully sleep several hours, she said optimistically. It is really nice that I can do this, because Eduard has been walking Jesker in the morning, so that I am able to sleep my funny schedule. Ah, you see, there is something humorous about me after all.

Flowerpot has been receiving awards and has been placing them on her blog with an open invitation to anyone to take them if they want one. How do you feel about that? I commented to her that she should take the time to hand them out, because otherwise they lose their value and I don’t think as a rule people will give themselves awards. I being the exception yesterday. We either take these awards seriously and appreciate them for what they are when they are bestowed upon us, or it is a free for all and they have no value whatsoever. I think there must be some guidelines about that, a sort of awards etiquette.

Well, after giving that some serious thought, I do want to end it on a lighter note and tell you that it has been bloody cold here the past two days. We’ve actually had to wear extra layers of clothing, and our scarves and gloves, and still we are cold. I am sure that this is nothing compared to what you people in the Midwest are going through, but then again, you are probably a hardier breed, as you are all descendants of tough Scandinavian farmers, aren’t you? You probably go out in your T-shirts in a blizzard and wear sandals when it is snowing. I consider myself to be an expert on the Midwest, because I’ve read Lake Woebegone Days. Small town America and I’ve read Main Street. I even have an aunt who used to live in Des Moines, Iowa. She now lives in Oregon, which I think is much wiser.

Okay, now I am going to sto
p and take some nice pills and find some good food to eat and shuffle it into my eager mouth. I am also going to make a very tall glass of hot milk. Oh, goody, what a treat! Man, it’s amazing the things that I can get happy about in my middle age.

You have yourselves a really nice day now and I hope you have all slept well. Ciao…

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Cup a Soup Images number 2.

It is obvious that a depressed person can not write an interesting post to her blog. So the answer is simple. Either I write no post, or I stop writing the minute I think my depression makes this post uninteresting. I hope I have enough sense to know when that is. God forbid I should spread my fatalistic points of view over the Internet and cause some sort of epidemic.

It is morning now and the dog has been walked and Eduard has gone to work. I really should be doing some housework now, but I have been sitting here reading other people’s blogs and drinking coffee all in a very leisurely manner as if I have all the time in the world. And to be truthful, because who am I kidding, I do have all the time in the world, because there is nobody here with a stopwatch to time if I have the dishes done by ten o’clock. I am my own boss, after all, and there is no time card to punch.

It makes me realize, especially today, how fortunate I am that I can dictate how little stress I can have in my life and how I can manage to keep it down to an absolute minimum. I suppose it would be nice if I brought home a paycheck, because some extra money is always nice, but the price I would pay for that would be high and I am very happy that I can sit here and type this in a very relaxed and unrushed manner without anyone looking over my shoulder. All the things I need to do, will get done.

I am also very fortunate that I have a husband who is not high maintenance and who has very few requirements because he is so self sufficient. That does not mean that I can neglect him, but it does mean that he functions very well regardless of my mood. The man is very emancipated, but I am glad that he allows me to do some things for him still, such as ironing his shirts and matching his socks and making meatballs for him when I am in an especially good mood.

I slept eight hours last night and I did this in spite of the fact that I took a long nap in the afternoon on the sofa. You can see that I am catching up on all of my sleep. It is a wondrous thing to wake up in the morning and to know that you have had a good night’s sleep and to actually feel well rested and clear headed. It gives you more courage to start the day with and it makes you more hopeful about the hours that you are awake.

My sister and I took the dogs for a long walk yesterday and I always go, even when I don’t feel all that great, because I think that walking the dog some distance is better than staying indoors and not being out in the cold fresh air. It is my antidote to somber moods and I think it helps. It is easier to go for a walk with someone else than to go by yourself, it motivates you to walk a greater distance.

Jesker loves it, because he can sniff to his heart’s contend and piddle all over bushes and blades of grass. It’s a lot of work for him, marking the neighborhood and making sure that his scent covers all the obvious spots. It must be very frustrating to him sometimes, because you can see where there have been dogs taller than him who have left their marks, but Jesker does his best anyway, except that he runs dry at the end of the walk, so he is always looking for puddles to drink from.

I have gone back to wearing my reading glasses when I am sitting behind the computer. I found myself squinting a little bit too much when I was reading all those blogs. It is all vanity that prevents me from wearing them and the other day I forgot to take them off and walked to the bus stop with them still on my nose. I didn’t occur to me that the world looked a little blurry and I was in a hurry to get some place. Sometimes, I am just a little bit absentminded and I am like those people who bump into telephone poles and apologize to them.

In order not to forget anything, which I easily do, I always have to stick to a strict routine. Everything has to happen very predictably at a certain time in the right order. Change the time and the order and I get completely turned around and forget to do one or more crucial things. This prevents me from being a very spontaneous person, although I have it in my character to be one. I have just conditioned myself to stick to a routine and it has become second nature to me. I also have it in my character to be a little bit obsessive, so these two opposites fight for their position and I am sometimes torn between the two.

I always think that my spontaneous self is the one that gets me into trouble and the controlling self is the one who makes sure everything goes smoothly. My, that makes me sound like I have a split personality like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. One time I was in the hospital with a woman who had multiple personalities and she would enter her room as one person and come out of it as another. It was very strange and spooky and you wanted to shake her and say, “Cut it out.”

Being so close to the psychiatric hospital, we see a lot of odd characters in the street. Some of them rant and rave and you wonder if it is save to let them wander about like that, but they never cause any problems. Some of them are dressed very oddly. There is a woman who is always dressed like a Christmas tree with huge false eyelashes. She is very jealous of other women and swears at them. I think she thinks she is a diva. It does add a touch of local color. It is like we have a lot of village idiots and no, I am not having prejudiced feelings towards psychiatric patients, being one myself. I think they are all rather endearing and I am sure their lives aren’t easy.

I have discovered some more weblogs and I will direct you to them here. It is up to you what you think of them. I find them interesting and worth the visit. My list of blogs is growing and I spend a considerable amount of time visiting them all. Here is the list of them: Crystal Jigsaw, Menopausal Old Bag, The Artful Eye and The way I See It. The last two are by the same artist and she makes very interesting art objects that she shows on both sites. I always forget how I stumble onto these blogs, but one way or the other I end up there and become intrigued by them. Sometimes, they are about things that are far from my particular interest, but I keep going there out of curiosity.

Now I have to pick some images to go with today’s post. I haven’t been making any new ones, so I will have to see what is left to offer you…
Cup a Soup it is, mmm, that makes me hungry! Time to get something to eat. I think my stomach is a black hole that can never be filled, especially in these dark winter months when it is screaming, “Chocolate!” Try and ignore that, will you.

Have a terrific day all of you. I will read all about your adventures tomorrow when I have had another lovely night’s sleep and I have awoken with a smile on my face. Ciao…

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Oriental Foods Images number 3.

Firstly, I want to direct you all to three new blogs I have been reading and they are: Art & Clairvoyance, Blog to the Bone and For the Long Run. And looking back now, that blog I sent you to yesterday, where you could win a prize, well, that was just a silly old blog and I don’t know why I bothered. I must not have been thinking straight yet. A person does get completely mixed up sometimes. I will add more new blogs as I get to know them better.

I usually need to read new blogs for a while before I recommend them. Sometimes they go all soppy on you and turn out to be god inspired, sentimental and menopausal, with people praying for each other in the comments and getting all teary eyed and emotional and carried away. I do so dislike that. I think you always need to try and keep your wits about you and not get all female and histrionic. Oh, I bet I am going to get a lot of comments about that remark.

I am a complete maniac at night. I go to sleep with the idea that I will only sleep for a little while and get up as quickly as I can. This is stupid, is it not? Just a few days ago, I wanted nothing more than to sleep all night and now I am fighting it again. I am calm and serene during the day and take naps, but at night I want to be active and I have this adverse reaction towards sleep.

This is how this whole thing probably started in the first place, with me liking to be up at night and then becoming an insomniac. That is fine if you feel good, but when you are depressed it does you no good at all and plays havoc with your mood.

Well, it is all sort of a puzzlement now, because it makes no sense to take sleep medication if you insist on being up during the night anyway. As it is, I have to fight off the drowsiness while I sit here and read other people’s blogs before I write this one.

I had such a nice day yesterday. My mind was at absolute peace with itself. It was as if I was walking inside a little cloud of serenity and nothing could bother me. All the stars and planets must have been aligned right. I took naps and sat behind the computer and found new blogs to read and when I found those, I read them extensively, so quite some time passed this way. I now read some 65 blogs and that keeps me out of trouble for the most part.

I am reading a very exciting book, but it is in Dutch by a Dutch author, so chances are that none of you will ever read it. It is pure escapism literature and is about a missing archeologist in Egypt and the Arc of the Covenant and an ancient civilization before ours. I am really in the mood again for reading and I have to organize my reading lists and have Eduard bring me books from the library also when he goes there. It’s been a long time since I have seriously read a book, but now I am so ready for it.

I am going to continue reading English language novels by female authors until I am finished with those lists. After that, I will have to come up with some other scheme, or go to the library myself and browse through the English language novels to see what I have not read yet. I don’t want to exclude male authors, but I do like the subjects that the women write about mostly. In a man’s world, there are usually whole different things that take priority in their thought processes. Is that a sexist remark? No, I do think there is overlap and I will get around to the male authors also.

We belong to a book club and have to order at least one book four times a year. The problem is, that we are finding it increasingly difficult to find a good book in their catalog. There is a lot of popular literature in there and chick lit, but not a lot of serious literature. We can quit the book club, but you can only do that in the month that you became a member and then you have to send a letter by registered mail. You can see that they make it as hard as possible for you to quit, because we can’t figure out which month we joined. Oh, bother.

There is an Icelandic author that I always read. His name is Arnaldur Indridason and he writes thrillers that take place on Iceland. They are pretty stark and forbidden, but interesting nonetheless. He writes with that sparseness that you associate with the Icelandic landscape and there is not one bit of romance in his novels. There is an ending, but there is never a happy ending. His main character always walks around in a measure of doom and fatality and never laughs, but he always gets the job done and the crime solved.

Another author I really like is Edna O’Brien, although I know I have not read near enough of her novels, but what I have read has been very impressive. I have such admiration for people who know from the start that they want to be writers and who have a true talent for it and can weave magically with their words and create another world for us to find new truths in. Some people just have a gift and they are born with it. It is there from the very beginning.

A.S. Byatt is another author I like very much. She writes like a man, all no nonsense and to the point, although others may disagree with me on that and say that her writing is not at all that realistic. To me it is. Her books are always a challenge to read and you really have to pay attention while you are reading, you can’t let your mind drift off to other things.

Have you ever read The Fifth Child and the Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing? These are two of her novels that I like best, although there are others I have read that were equally enjoyable.

I suppose my point is, that there are some wonderful writers out there and that it is such a privilege to have these novels in the library for us to read. I go through periods when my need for books is insatiable and I need to read constantly at the cost of everything else. It is a hunger that needs to be fed and I am so happy that there is this huge group of authors to chose from who deliver quality work and who write convincingly about so many subjects that interest me and teach me about human nature.

I don’t feel the need any longer to write a novel myself. I see what is out there and I know I have nothing to add to that. There is more than enough already and not en
ough time to read it all. Besides that, I know my own limitations and I would only want to be able to write like the best of them, because I admire them so. As far as I am concerned, all writers go to heaven.

Well, it’s time to close up shop. I must lie down on the sofa for a bit and see if there is any sleep left in me. It is a boring thing to do, but it can’t be helped. Thank goodness it is Sunday and Eduard is home today. It means that we can have a lazy day and not have to do any chores. Whoever wrote that the seventh day should be the day of rest, deserves a posthumous award.

Have a great Sunday, y’all. Don’t let that Texas drawl fool you, I am as Dutch as they come. Ciao…

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Toys Images number 3

First things first. If you want to participate in a give away, go to Honeysuckle Lane’s Simple Joys and leave a comment. That makes you eligible for a prize and it is a nice weblog also. You have to do it before Sunday night, I think.

Having gotten that out of the way, I must sit here and type some sensible words, although I don’t know if I am at all capable of it. I didn’t sleep much last night, because my stubborn mind wanted to be up, although my body said to go to sleep. It was a battle between the two and I think my mind won in the end. Now I have a somewhat coherently functioning brain that has been fed coffee and may be quite capable of turning out a halfway decent post.

I think I am suffering from the same problem as Babaloo and that is a shortage of material to write about. So, when short of material, wrack your brain and come up with something.

Well, one thing I can tell you, is that the weather has been nice these past couple of days. I hasn’t been cold at all, 10 degrees Celsius and for the time of year, that is pretty warm. If it was up to me, but of course it isn’t, it would stay like this until springtime and then magically the weather would turn beautiful and we would all go outside bare armed and bask in the sunlight.

Of course, it is possible that Father Winter has some more cold weather in petto for us and we mustn’t jubilate to early and start any wishful thoughts about spring and happy lambs in the meadow. Which leads me to lamb chops and why people would want to eat those?

Anyway, my daughter called me last night to say that she had arrived home safely and that the rest of her trip had been lovely. They had loved Barcelona and Northern Spain and want to go back there and see the rest of it. They saw a lot of Gaudi, of course. I am glad she is home safe again with her son and her cat and dog and that she can get on with her life again after such a long holiday. She didn’t sound jet lagged and maybe she will be spared the worst of that.

My sister and I walked the dogs around the pond yesterday and it was a real outing for me after having had such a strange day the day before. I am trying to put that day out of my mind as quickly as possible.

So, we walked around the pond and the grass and the weeds have all been cut back and the path has been cleaned of all the fallen leaves, so it makes for a much more comfortable walk and the dogs can roam around a bit better too now. Jesker is such a super cool dog and pays no attention to what my sister’s dog is up to. Jesker is there to sniff in all the possible interesting holes and burrows and doesn’t care which other dog comes walking by. My sister’s dog challenges every other dog and it can be quite a problem, so I am always happy when we go there and we don’t meet anybody else.

When I got home, Eduard came home shortly after me and had gotten the groceries. I am so glad that he is doing them for now, because, although I am feeling very much better, I am not feeling inclined to do the groceries yet, as it seems all rather stressful to me still. I worry about the tiniest details of it and the grocery store doesn’t seem like a very friendly environment to me right now.

Now, if you gave me 100 Euros, I would go to M&S Fashions and spend it gladly, but that would not be stressful shopping to me. That would be an entirely fun and relaxing experience.

Eduard keeps trying to make short films of Jesker doing adorable things, but Jesker stops doing them as soon as the camera is pointed at him. He doesn’t have any movie star ambitions. All he wants is for me to sit on the sofa and pet him and tickle him behind his ears and you can only film that so many times. When he does do something funny, Eduard doesn’t have the camera handy and he is too late to capture the moment.

Eduard has also tried to take candid photographs of me and candid they are indeed, as I look like an idiot on all of them. I have him delete them all. I don’t know what it is, but I am just not photogenic. I think that one day I will have my portrait painted and have the artist paint me in the most flattering light and remove all my blemishes and other less attractive features. Or I’ll go to a photographer who will photoshop the hell out of me.

Th other option is that there will be no photographic record of me of the last thirty years of my life. Mmm, that’s a viable option. It will be as if I never got beyond a certain age. I will be frozen in time at the age of thirty nine, when most of my photographs stop.

On Dutch TV, there is an interesting series that just started about the British Museum. Last night it was about the art restorers and it was very educational. Leave it to the BBC to come up with something good like that. The Museum is wonderful and looks like a place where you would gladly get lost in. They have a cornucopia of items from all over the world, some of them looted of course, but nevertheless very impressive. It would be something if all countries started demanding the return of their national treasures. Such mayhem would ensue. Think of all the Rembrandts in the Hermitage.

No, I suppose it is best that all of these items are lovingly looked after and cared for properly and that they are made available for all the people in the world to see them in the best possible circumstances.

There was another program on about a male gorilla named Yvo, who was raised by people and who did not identify with his fellow gorillas and did not mate with the females. He was sent from one zoo to the next and did not do his job. The question was, what do you do with a gorilla that does not reproduce? Obviously, it is very important that those in captivity do, because of the threat of extinction in their natural habitats. Poor Yvo just sat there and did nothing.

It is really sad when animals can only survive in zoos and not in their own environments. A zoo is not the best place to be. It is a place of captivity, after all, even if they are looked after well. I am sure that a lot of these animals are bored beyond tears and that they don’t appreciate being looked at by hordes of curious people all day long, who laugh at them for being funny and showing human like behavior.

Well, here I go getting on my soap box again. Animal rights and all that. I just think that they are at the mercy of us and that so very often we do them no justice. I think that my political party should be more vocal about animal rights. They do a good job about hum
an rights, but I think they can do a better job in this other area as well.

Speaking of human rights, can we all go to the Olympics in Bejing when China tramples human rights so very much and suppresses other people? What are your feelings about that? On the one hand, it is good for the Chinese to be exposed to modern democratic people and ways of thinking, on the other hand you want them to feel some amount of international pressure to stop abuse and oppression of other people. What is the best choice?

Okay, now I am going to look for some images, lest I start to stand on too many soap boxes all at once.

You can tell I am feeling better, can’t you? There is some spit and vinegar back in me. I need that, because I need to vacuum the whole apartment today and I need energy for that.

I hope you all have a lovely day and that your part of the world is peaceful and tranquil. Ciao…

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Flags of Maastricht Images number 1.

It”s 2:30 am now and I am awake, but not quite, so I may lie down on the sofa any minute, so you have been forewarned. If I suddenly disappear, that is where I am and that may be sooner than later, because I am making a hell of a lot of spelling mistakes in this sentence. Wow, it took me some time to set that straight, I am sleep drunk again. “Who, me officer? No, I can find my way home just fine! As long as I am following that marching band over there!”

Okay, it’s 4 o’clock now and I slept some more on the sofa, Silly me for having tried to type those sentences above when I was in the state I was in. I just had to fix some more mistakes in them after I thought I had gotten them right before.

I apparently gave some people the idea that I was taking a sabbatical from this blog and that was not my intention at all. I am taking a little sabbatical from life, but I am keeping the blog going as usual. I need it to keep my thoughts going straight, what would I do without this blog, people? I look forward to writing it ever day and it is the perfect way for me to spend the early hours of the morning.

Yesterday I had a perfectly lazy day, although that had not been my intention to start with. I had thought I was going to be very active and do all sorts of things, but as the day took shape, I realized that I wanted to do less and less and I ended up doing hardly anything at all and it felt good.

I washed my face and didn’t apply any make up and walked the dog with a naked face and I didn’t care. Then I cleaned up the kitchen and hung up the laundry to dry and from that point forward I did nothing more strenuous than walk the dog one more time. I hung out on the sofa and drank coffee and smoked cigarettes and thought shallow thoughts about very unimportant things. I petted the dog and watched the cats be goofy and ate when I felt like it.

In the meantime, Eduard had gone to the library and to the grocery store one more time and he brought back a hefty book for me about Mongolia. He said it was because I had written about being a Mongol and maybe I would like to know more about it. Only Eduard would think of something like that. It is quite an impressive book and I took it to bed with me last night and fell asleep reading about the early Mongols and how their clan system worked in the olden days of the Khans.

But I totally wasted my day and it felt so good. I napped in the afternoon and I figured that this was a good thing and that I was catching up on all of my lost sleep. I wasn’t worried about not being able to sleep during the night, I just assumed that I would and I was right. I went to bed at nine o’clock and went out like a light. Taking the Oxazepam with the Temazepam works, even though I did get up briefly and tried to write this blog. Old habits die hard.

I now see the sensibility of getting a good night’s sleep. It is exciting to be up in the middle of the night, but it is better to spend it sleeping and to store up energy.

When I was living by myself briefly, I had a heck of a time falling asleep at night and I always took sleeping pills. I always felt very lonely in my bed all by myself. That changed when Eduard came into my life and then I didn’t need the sleeping pills anymore. It was so nice to have a beloved body next to me in bed and to go to sleep that way and to wake up with him beside me. I couldn’t believe my luck and he was always toasty warm, like a little oven to crawl up against and be warm with. Eduard was truly God sent.

I started taking the sleeping pills in the hospital, when going to sleep was murderous and couldn’t be done any other way. We would sit in the patient’s living room together and wait for the pills to work and then drowsily walk off to our individual bedrooms to try and get a good night’s sleep. Sometimes the pills didn’t work and we would get up during the night, something which was strictly forbidden, and we would be chased back to bed when found out, but for as long as it lasted, we would sit in the living room and smoke cigarettes and drink tea.

I became manic in the hospital, except that I had no idea what was happening to me as my diagnosis had not been discussed with me as I was under observation. I went from being completely depressed to being completely happy. I did all sorts of things that I considered very funny, but that now looking back were probably quite a nuisance for the nurses there. I thought I was quite a hilarious person and wanted everybody to have a good time, including all the depressed people. I was actually quite obnoxious at times, that much I know now, and also dysphoric and I picked fights with people whom I did not like. Boy, what a handful I was.

Sometimes, at night, we wouldn’t take our sleep medication right away, and sit up and tell each other horror stories and extremely bad jokes or we would sing and dance and pretty much turn the place upside down. The night nurse was way at the other end of the corridor watching TV and I don’t know how much of it she was aware of and how much of it she let us get away with. I know that when things really got out of hand, she did show up and told us to take our pills and to go to bed, but she was only one and we were many.

After four months of being in the hospital came the day when they told me that I would have to go home. I took this really hard. At the time I was not hypo manic anymore and I didn’t want to leave. I was afraid to leave the hospital and to go out into the real world, but they were afraid that I would never be able to anymore if I didn’t. That I would become a institutionalized person. I became very angry and aggressive and broke some things and they had quite a struggle calming me down. I was lucky that they didn’t put me in solitary confinement. After that, my spirit was broken and I was a meek as a lamb and they didn’t have any problems with me anymore. A month later I left. Some time after that I made my first suicide attempt.

This is too morose. I started off telling you about my sleeping problems and end up here. Let’s talk about something else all together now.

That summer, I discovered wild flowers and everywhere I went it seemed they grew. Eduard and I went for long walks in the countryside and I picked wildflowers to my heart’s contend. I couldn’t believe the abundance of them and filled vases of them to put in our room at the student house. When they started to droop, I hung them upside down to dry and we had many bouquets of dried wild flowers.
Coming from California, where you don’t have this abundance of wild flowers, this was a very magical thing to me. I couldn’t believe that these things just grew in all the fields here and that I could pick them in any color.

We also did a lot of photography that summer and Eduard taught me how to develop my own pictures. That was a magical process. I took close up pictures of tree bark and sheep’s wool on barbed wire and wild flowers, of course. I was great watching the images come up in the developer and knowing when to take them out to let them dry. We don’t do that anymore now, especially not now that we have the digital camera. It will become a lost art.

Speaking of photographs, I have to pick out some images to put here. Let’s see what it will be today…

I got sidetracked giving the dog fresh water and the cats their food while I went to get a cup of coffee. The cats patiently waited in the kitchen for somebody to come and fill their food dishes. Not a peep out of them, not even Toby this time. There was enough milk, but that isn’t what they wanted. They like Felix Seafood flavor best now, so that is what we have been buying and yesterday they had a herring and so did Jesker. Jesker also like cornflakes with lowfat milk and if I ask him, “Do you want cornflakes?” he walks to the kitchen ready for some. He can’t quite believe his luck when I give him some. He looks at me like he is thinking, “Are these really for me?” Yes, I know, we spoil the animals.

Okay, that’s it for me for today. I have no more words in me. I am going to read other people’s blogs now. So cheerio and good day and all that. Ciao to you…

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