Marvelous Monday

Van Gogh 9

Monday morning, almost 6 AM. I tried to get up a few times earlier, but I had to go lie down on the sofa and sleep some more, because it was obvious that I was not done with that at all when I sat myself down behind this computer here. I have done a lot of sleeping this past weekend, but old habits die hard, and you think you have to get up in the wee hours when, in fact, you are not ready for that at all. The result is a sound asleep body behind the computer whose hand spastically squeezes the mouse every once in a while, jarring the mind temporarily awake trying to figure out what it has done now.

Oh, before I forget, someone has sent me a Hallmark E-card, but I can’t open the link, so if it was anyone reading this blog, would you try again, please? I know it was really a Hallmark card, because I checked. You always have to be so careful with these things! I am afraid to open them, in case I let a virus into my computer. That’s why I would prefer it if it said that a specific someone has sent me a card instead of just someone. Thanks for the thought anyway, whoever.

Yesterday was all about sleep and how to download music on my little MP3 player. I couldn’t download the music that I had from Deezer, there was no way to do that, and I looked for other sites where you could download free music, but it all seemed very cumbersome and highly illegal and fraught with frustration, so I ended going to my own Real Player where I had stored a bunch of my own albums and downloaded those on the MP3 player instead. I downloaded 13 albums, which gives me quite a bit of music.

Eduard hooked the MP3 player up to the speaker system and it works great. The only hitch is, that I can’t figure out yet how to get it to play the music randomly and it must, because I don’t want to listen to the same albums in a row every day starting from the same place. We also want to figure out a way we can switch from the mP3 player to Deezer and back again, so that I will have a bigger choice of music. Aren’t these nice problems to contemplate? Actually, they frustrate the you know what out of me!

Wine Glasses

The sleeping part has been nice, and normally signifies a major change in my mood, so I don’t know where I am going to end up after all of this. First I have to get all of this sleep out of my system. I have the yellow blanket always laying folded up on the sofa and lie down and pull it over me at any time that is convenient to me and off to sleep I go. Sometimes Jesker lies beside me and sometimes some cats lie on top of me, but mostly, they just let me be and let me sleep. Considering I do so little of it normally, this is a real blessing and I sure am going to take advantage of it. It must be some natural form of sleep therapy.

Eduard and I have decided to split the grocery shopping again, with me doing the major shopping at the Albert Heijn close by and Eduard doing the rest closer to his work. He also gets to go to the open air market for the cheese and the salmon and the very good bread, because it is right by his work. I would like the open air market, but it is really inconvenient for me. Albert Heijn is just 5 minutes by bike from here.

Fish

To answer a question in the comments box, I could very easily make mandalas out of all of these images, but I don’t want to, because I think that is too easy, at least, for me it is. For me the challenge lies in not making mandalas out of them, but using the other effects to get an interesting image and I am still experimenting with those. I am kind of done with mandala making for now. I need the mental stimulation to do something different. I am sure all of you artists out there are familiar with the phenomenon.

Oh yes, I almost forgot. We have a new film poster. It is 60 x 80 cm, just like the other one and it is from a film called “Away from her.” Olympia Dukakis also plays in it. I haven’t seen it, but the poster is very attractive and it caught my eye when I was sitting in the café at the bar. I looked at it for a long while before I asked Eduard to see if he could get me one. Of course, with Eduard that is never a problem, he always finds a way.

Well, I think I am going to figure out now how to play the music on the MP3 player randomly. Maybe if I try in it another language, I will understand the instructions better.

Have a marvelous Monday, if such a thing exists at all. I hope all is peaceful for you and that you don’t get startled awake to harshly.

Ciao…

Read Full Post »

Jesker Film

Yesterday evening, Eduard took Jesker for his little outing to do his business and it was raining, which got Jesker very wet. Eduard rubbed him dry with a big towel, as usual, and afterwards Jesker always does this happy little run as seen on this short film. We think he is very amusing, do you too?

We had another lovely day yesterday and I do like the way Eduard and I are communicating and exchanging thoughts and opinions and intimacies about our relationship. These are great learning moments and I think they do us a lot of good. We are very lucky that we are able to express ourselves so well in language and that we are not lost for words to describe what we mean and feel. I am not naive enough to think that this will solve the whole problem, but I think we are on the right road together.

Having turned the clock ahead for the extra hour of summer time is really working out well for me. I go to bed at a more reasonable hour and I wake up at a more reasonable hour too. I think all winter, I have been on the wrong schedule and that I never caught up. This time schedule agrees with me much better and I sleep much better too and I don’t get up in the wee hours of the night to sit and blog.

Eduard has not made any interesting photographs these past two days, so I am going to give you one from last week that is a view from our front window and looks down the street that runs directly into our apartment building. Yes, it was snowing, bbbrrr…

You see that I have changed the photograph on my profile. You can see a full view of it on my post before this one. Eduard took it yesterday morning, so it is as fresh as day old bread. I really don’t know if I am complimenting myself here or not. I think it is a dubious case.

Today I am seeing my Obesitas Specialist and he will hopefully give me a date for when my gastric band will be filled again, because I have to lose another 10 kilos. I am also seeing the dietitian, who will no doubt tell me that I am eating not nutritious enough food and that I am not getting enough roughage, but I do take vitamin pills every day and I am high on the dairy products, being a real Dutch woman and therefor being a real dairy head. She is going to say that I don’t eat enough fruit and vegetables and I am going to say that she is right and promise improvement.

That’s the way it works.

There is a non fat yogurt that I eat called Optimel and it has fruit, but no added sugar and I am nearly addicted to the stuff. It is my main food source and it is almost as good as eating ice cream. I also like crackers and all sorts of cheese and omelets. I can’t eat a whole apple or a pear and I can’t eat oranges or manderines, because I upchuck them. Bread is also difficult to eat and I can’t eat meat at all, except for fish. I eat vegetables sometimes, but they are not my favorite food. Really, when you have the choice of what is going to fill you in a short amount of time, you pick something you really love.

Therefor, taking vitamins is very important and I take Davitamon Chewables and extra vitamin C.

Well, I am still sitting here in my comfy red bathrobe, but it is ten am already and I think I need to get the show on the proverbial road. Jesker is taking his morning nap, making a lot of noise while he must be dreaming and the cats are being lazy on the bed. There is absolutely no action here in the morning, except for me who cleans the apartment.

Have a more than mediocre Monday, ciao…

Read Full Post »

Painted Beach Images number 6.

I actually managed to sleep until four o’clock this morning, which I think is good enough and reason to celebrate with a good cup of coffee. Well, what else am I going to have so early in the morning, right? I am certainly not going to sit here with a glass of champagne. Imagine having champagne at this time of the day, I would have to crawl back into bed after one glass of it.

I had a perfectly non eventful day yesterday, so there is not much I can tell you about that. I cleaned the apartment and watched two films on the film channel. One was called Vers le Sud and the other was called Eden. One was a French Canadian film and the other one was German. I suppose that is a bonus of living in Europe, you do get to watch many foreign language films and not just American ones. It is nice to hear other languages spoken in a film and it is also nice to see how other cultures are represented. There is always that tiny bit of difference.

I also worked a bit with the book about mood disturbances and I am pretty much done with that now. I am working on the last pages. I learned a lot from it and it gave me much food for thought. I think I am a wiser woman for it. I have discovered things that I have also discussed with my SPN and that has caused me to open up a lot during my discussions with her, so that has been very helpful.

I took the dog for a long walk at noon time. We were gone for about an hour and walked all over the neighborhood. He enjoyed it very much and was very busy sniffing and leaving his mark all over the place. I have to remember to do that more often, because it is such an adventure for him. I am not always motivated to walk that far, but once I do, I realize how enjoyable it is.

Well, that’s all I have to say for today. It isn’t much, but since I have been rating myself with sixes, I just haven’t been that inspired to write more. I just don’t have the ideas and the words to give you more than this. It’s very hard to keep my mind on writing this.

So, I wish you all a terrific day and more inspiration than I have to write great posts. Ciao…

Read Full Post »

Gaugin’s Chair Images number 8.

This is the second night in a row that I have woken real early because I have forgotten to take my sleeping pills. I put them on my night stand and then forget to take them. Silly me. It’s not falling asleep that is the problem, it is staying asleep. I would love to sleep eight hours one night.

I had a real productive visit with my SPN yesterday morning. I have come to realize that I walk around with a backpack of old hurt and sadness that I need to unload and I think I am more than ready to do that now.

It feels good to talk about what still hurts and what I am still sad about and to sit and cry about that and to feel the relief afterwards of having been honest and having aired all of it. And it doesn’t stop there. It carries on when I am home and I talk to Eduard about my life and I feel the same catharsis and cry and feel the relief afterwards. Suddenly is is easy to be very honest about everything. I don’t have to keep up appearances anymore and make it all look better than it was. Brutal honesty is good.

The twenty two years of my life in the States play such an important part in my memories. They were my formative years. When I became who I am for a large part. From my 17th until my 39th. Ideas and attitudes I developed then were misshapen and dysfunctional and I knew it, because I spent the last two years there trying to discard some of them. I am getting rid of the rest of them now.

I used to have a an image in my head there about myself and that was the image of a woman shackled in a low and dusty attic, on her stomach, face down, in the dark with just one air vent in front of her to survive by. That’s how I felt. Trapped.

I didn’t have the kind of friends I could share this feeling with. I only had friends to share the middle class American dream with. That we were all happy living in the suburbs with our nice houses and our nice cars and our well earning husbands and our smart children and our good volunteer work. For me it was a lie.

During the last years of my first marriage I developed illnesses that were all due to stress. Psychosomatic illnesses. Looking back, I can see that now. All the extreme mental stress translated itself into physical disability. I couldn’t fall apart mentally, so I fell apart physically.

During my last year in the States, I was taking medicine for my heart, because of an arrhythmia and it helped, it really did, but why did I have the arrhythmia?

Oh, the sadness of it all and to think that I am still walking around with it now and that I still need to get over it now. But I will. I am determined to put it all behind me once and for all and to go on living without this heavily weighing load.

I have to write about something else now. The above has worn me out. I just read it and feel how heavy it is.

Yesterday, Eduard got me an alarm clock with two alarm times. He has set one for noon and one for 5 pm. I remember to take my medication in the morning and at night, but those are the two times I sometimes forget, so it is handy to be reminded. It has a radio controlled clock, so once an hour it automatically adjusts itself to the right time. Don’t ask me how that works.

I watched this incredibly good film the other day. It was called In the Land Of the Blind and it was about a country where a stupid but cruel dictator ruled, who was finally overthrown by the opposition and murdered and what the opposition did once they were in office, which turned out to be nearly as bad as what the dictator had done while he was in office. One man, who was to some degree innocent, although you could argue about that, became the victim of both systems and spent the rest of his life in jail being tortured there. When I told Eduard about the film, he said it sounded like Nicaragua. So, that is your point of reference.

Now I will go and read some other blogs and hopefully leave some comments there. Like the Rotten Correspondent says, you can always drop by and just say hi, I was here.

Have a terrific day, everyone. I will do the same here. Ciao…

Read Full Post »

Blue Flower Images number 1

Because we had to turn back the clock one hour, yesterday seemed like it took forever. The day just lasted and lasted. Every time I looked at the clock, it was earlier than I thought it was going to be, causing me to feel very exasperated. When it was finally time to go to bed, I was more than ready and I went gladly and went to sleep quickly. I didn’t even really read my book. When I laid down with it, I closed my eyes and was gone in no time.

Yesterday was an extremely boring day as a result off all the clock watching. I watched a bunch of movies. I watched Forrest Gump for the fourth time and enjoyed it thoroughly. I also watched Con Air with Nicolas Cage and Fatal Attraction for the third time. That was a real scary movie and I thought, “There but for the grace of God go we.” Well, that is exaggerating things a bit, but it does make you stop and think about what can happen.

The problem was, that it did make everything very real to me again and made me feel disgusted with the whole situation all over again and I don’t think that that was necessary. Nevertheless, these were my feelings and I knew that only sleep would erase them from my active state of mind. This morning I feel kind of silly for having felt them so strongly, although I know I shouldn’t feel silly and that these feelings have a legitimate place in the scheme of things.

Sometimes I don’t know what to do with these feelings, as I feel it is unreasonable to get angry with Eduard all over again, although I do feel like it. I am angry at him for making me feel the way I do, for having the thoughts that I do, although it could be argued that I am responsible for my own thoughts and feelings, but I am not, am I? They are obviously triggered by other people and events that I have no control over.

I suppose the road to healing is forgiveness. Am I ready to do that? I don’t know, I would have to be very honest and take a long hard look in my heart to see if I am. I am not a good Christian who can turn the other cheek. I suppose I feel that I have to be on my guard still and that is not very conducive to forgiveness.

Enough said about that. I wonder why I like the movie Forrest Gump so much? I guess it has something to do with the eternal optimism it radiates and with the fact that nobody else but Tom Hanks could have played Forrest Gump so well. I don’t know anything about Tom Hanks personally and I would like to keep it that way, as I don’t really want to know anything about a movie star too much, unless they are at the end of their career or dead, as I think too much knowledge gets in the way of enjoying them. I get interested in movie stars when they are in the past, such as Katherine Hepburn and Ingrid Bergman. I have books about them.

Which reminds me of the books on my bookcase and the fact that I still want to arrange them by color. I used to have them arranged by color, but when we moved, they became disarranged. I recognize a book by its color, so it’s a good system and attractive too. I especially like green books, green being one of my favorite colors. You think I am silly, don’t you? It’s not more silly than arranging them by alphabet or subject. And it looks good!

Well, that’s all I’ve got for today. Thank you all the people who commented yesterday with your wise words. I still have to write that email.

Have a great day, everyone, ciao…

Read Full Post »

Monet 2 Images number 5.

Well, what a nice way to start this Sunday morning. The Rotten Correspondent has seen fit to give me the You Make Me Smile Award, which makes me wonder if she has read all of my posts lately? Nevertheless, there must have been something endearing about them and I very gladly accept the award, of course, I am not going to let that one pass me by, and I will pass it on, as is the custom, to other equally deserving bloggers. Or should I say, more deserving bloggers? Because I love them dearly, and they hold a special place in my heart, I pass this You Make Me Smile Award on to Frances of Carpet full of Holes, Bobbie Of Great Grannie Blog and Beverley of Eleanor’s Blog. So, pick up your award from the side bar, girls, and remember that you are all well loved and have been with me from the beginning and I appreciate that. You’re a bunch of great women!

I woke up this morning on the sofa, under the yellow blanket, with Nouri laying on top of me and that was very cozy. It was four am and I felt like I had slept enough. I had been awake once at 1:30 am and found Eduard sound asleep in his chair with his book in his lap and his head nearly falling off is body. So I gently woke him and sent him off to bed He was very sweet and disoriented and had no idea at first what was going on.

I thought I was wide awake then, but I made myself some hot chocolate and was soon asleep again. I like this new habit I have of making hot chocolate. I fix it in the microwave and it is done in two minutes and it tastes great. I don’t know how many calories there are in it and I don’t want to know, because it is such a wonderful treat and it warms my stomach and makes me feel nice and drowsy and satisfies my sweet tooth also. I make it with two heaping spoons of cacao and three spoons of sugar and lots of low fat milk. It is smooth and dark and bitter and sweet all in one.

When I wake up in the morning, I feel good. There, I have said it. I just feel good, there are no worries in my head and I look forward to making coffee and lighting a cigarette and turning the computer on to read my first blogs. It is all so very uncomplicated and satisfying. They are such simple pleasures, but boy, do I enjoy them. And then they are made especially enjoyable when you receive a reward. That brings a smile to your early morning face! An award a day keeps the doctor away. Well, no, if you got that many, they would become worthless, of course. They do become very valuable when you get one sometimes when you least expect it.

Omega Mum asked me if I had ever blogged about my childhood and I think I have mentioned the odd bits every now and then, but I think because of the festivities today, I will not get into that now. Rest it to say, that I come from a pretty dysfunctional family in which neither parent behaved normally. Some other time, I will get into more details, I have to test the waters a little bit first and see how the possible reactions would be to my revealing more of this. I am never ashamed to tell things, but I do have to keep my audience in mind and their sensitivities. Maybe I should take a poll. It would be handy to have one of those poll things on the blog where people can vote. Does she tell or doesn’t she?

Yesterday turned out to be a good day when you compare it to the day before. The lowest I scored was a four and that was once in the morning when I was feeling a bit low and insecure about things. When I first woke up in the morning I rated myself at a seven, as I do now. Mostly I stayed around sixes and fives. I don’t think that is bad at all, and I don’t expect to be all sevens again yet, that will take some time, I’m sure. God forbid I should be an eight! Although I would like that very much. I think that may be a bit unrealistic and that would worry me also. Looking back in my diary, I see mostly sevens in the past and that seems like a very decent even score to have.

Yesterday afternoon Eduard went to the film house to give an extra training to some volunteers. When he left, he put on his rain suit and left on his motorcycle. Of course, right away I started to question by myself why he was going on his motorcycle and why not on his bicycle and did he need the rain suit because he was traveling far? I will have these kinds of insecurities for a while to come yet. I need to learn to trust him again and not let my imagination take over. I wonder how long that will take? I realize I am full of insecurity still and I can only rest at ease when I know exactly where he is and at what time he is coming home. I know that is no way to live and that I have to relax, but I seem unable to right now.

In the meantime I am reading The Unquiet Mind and it is a fascinating book as she manages to achieve so much in her life in spite of her disorder. Lithium works very well for her, so she is lucky that way, but still she is victim to the ups and downs that come with the disorder, yet she manages to have a very successful career in the medical profession. You wonder how it is possible? I look at my own life and see so little achievement, just a very average sort of life with nothing really outstanding and to tell you the truth, I wouldn’t even call it an average life, what am I saying? It certainly has not been an ordinary life. It’s been more like a dramatic movie script. I know one thing, I want Meryl Streep to play me in the film version! And Robert Redford can be Eduard. He is all wrinkly like Eduard too.

That reminds me that I have not been watching the film channels, which is a shame, because I am sure that all sorts of good films are passing me by. I don’t know why I have taken this hiatus from watching films, except that I find them hard to concentrate on right now. I’ll have to look in the film guide and see if there is anything really good coming on that will grab my attention.

Of course, the books I got at the book store, like The Unquiet Mind, I am all reading in Dutch, but I find that the translation is so good that it doesn’t bother me at all. I thought it would and that I would prefer to read them in English, but it is turning out to be no problem at all. Sometimes, when a book is badly translated, it is. You find yourself constantly translating it back into English, but I am not doing that now at all. In the past, when a book has been written in English, I have preferred to read it in English, but now I find I can read it in Dutch and that it doesn’t distract from the stor
y at all. Maybe that is also because my Dutch language skills are becoming better. I am getting used to the sentence constructions and the vocabulary.

Jesker is chasing Gandhi around the apartment, they are playing tag, it seems. She is the only cat he will play with. The others he just tolerates. Gandhi is allowed to sleep on his pillow with him. I don’t know why that is, but she has never been intimidated by him, so maybe that is why. Nouri loves him, but he does not love her back, the silly dog.

Well, people, this is going to be a short post. I am going to make cigarettes now, because I have run out and I have nothing left to say. Just for once I can’t be rambling on and on. I hope for a happy day and that Eduard and I will have our nice Sunday morning ritual together. With hard boiled eggs and soft white bread buns with strawberry jam.

Have a wonderful day. Remember that it is Sunday and that officially you don’t have to do anything! Ciao…

P.S. I have added a new blogger to my list of favorite bloggers and that is Jo Beaufoix who is very humorous and the mother of two little girls called Miss M and Miss E and she is married to Mr B.

Read Full Post »

Sparrow in Snow.

Well, I told you, I had my little sleep and here I am again, drinking my coffee, smoking my cigarettes, reading blogs, getting the day started. I wanted to go on the scales this morning, but then I forgot all about it and now I have had three cups of coffee, so I won’t. Every little ounce counts, after all, and I don’t want to become discouraged. I always want to weigh myself before any food or drink has passed my lips, in my underwear, holding my breath to make myself as light as possible.

Contrary to what I had hoped for, the last 26 lbs are not coming off that easily. They have gripped my body tightly and won’t let go. I think that I am still eating too much and that the portions should be smaller, so maybe the next time the gastric band is filled, that will make the difference between eating enough and eating just a little less. Oh, what the heck, I am going to weigh myself and see what the damage is…

Well, the damage is 93.8 kilos, which I am not happy about at all, because the last time I weighed myself it was 92.4 kilos, so this won’t do at all. I keep moving up and down a kilo or so and that’s no fun. I must be smarter about the food I eat. It isn’t that I eat large portions, but they are obviously not small enough yet for me to be losing the weight, which makes me think that the gastric band it not working optimally yet. So, next month the obesitas nurse specialist can just fill that thing a bit more and not be so careful about it, for all I care. I think I am going to live on dry toast and crackers, although I am not looking forward to that.

I remember my neighbor telling me that the last kilos were hard to get rid off. I didn’t believe her at the time, because I thought the gastric band would do the work for you, but now I am having some serious doubts. If it isn’t filled properly, it can’t work properly and you really have to diet. Right then, toast it is and Melba toast and cheese and crackers. It will be dull eating for a while, but it will be for a good cause.

I am trying to remember what we used to do when it was Labor Day weekend when I still lived in California, but nothing immediately springs to mind. I think we may have barbecued a lot, sort of the last barbecue of the year if I remember correctly. My life in the States seems as if it happened to someone else and sometimes I have a hard time remembering the details of it. Of course, I’ll never forget Christmas dinners and Thanksgiving dinners for all the abundance of food and all the left over turkey. I used to think that heated up stuffing with turkey was especially good.

We don’t do anything that traditional here. People fix more exotic foods if they have a family dinner, we don’t have a traditional dish as such. It is a bit of a custom to eat game in the form of venison or pheasant or duck or some such bird. People also eat rabbit or lamb. There are no traditional vegetables persé, although sweet and sour red cabbage with apples is eaten a lot. Potatoes are served plain boiled. We don’t have any of the delicious traditional pies for desert, like pumpkin pie or apple pie. Usually it is something like bavarois or another kind of exotic desert. Usually something with lots of fresh fruit and whipped cream. We don’t fix huge amounts of foods and then have days worth of left overs. We fix just enough and maybe some people get a small second helping if they want.

In America people as a rule eat very large portions of food. Their plates are twice as full of food as they are here when they go to a restaurant. I’ll never forget going to a Denny’s for the first time and seeing the huge breakfasts that were served there. I couldn’t believe it! This was in the early seventies when cholesterol played no role yet in the daily diet and people just ate and ate and for such a low price too. A steak dinner for 5.95 and the steak was as big as the plate it was served on!

Now that I have the gastric band, I will never be able to go to a restaurant and order a plain meal again. I did used to like eating breakfast at Denny’s, but now I would only be able to eat a portion of scrambled eggs. My favorite breakfast used to be two eggs over easy, hashed browns, sausages, bacon, wheat toast with real butter and coffee. Although the coffee never tasted that good.

I also used to like going to Chevy’s and have their fresh tortillas and what is that grilled meat dish called that you wrap in the tortillas with guacamole and sour cream and fried onions? The name escapes me. I used to be a real food connoisseur and I never gained an ounce in America. It’s all that darn medication that did it here in the Netherlands.

I don’t really have a favorite food here, except maybe for croquettes which are our take out food. They can be quite nice if they are well made with lots of meat in them. But you can’t eat too many of them, as they are deep fried. There are also the frikandel which is a sausage that should be eaten with lots of mustard and onions and ketchup on it. Sensible people don’t eat it. It is too fattening! That’s the kind of food you eat secretly and then don’t tell anyone about.

The pies here are very good to eat. They are large and flat and are filled with all sorts of good ingredients, fresh fruit and whipped cream being my favorite one. There is also one filled with thick rice pudding that is very nice. And of course apples and peaches and strawberries. Nobody sits on a café terrace without ordering a piece of pie to go with their coffee. It is actually called ‘vlaai‘ and is typical for this region. They are exported throughout the Netherlands. You can order your coffee with whipped cream too, instead of just plain cream, which makes for an extra treat. The coffee is always very good and strong and is individually made with an espresso type machine. Similar to my Senseo Coffee maker.

Oh, of course, I forgot about the famous herring that has been cleaned and decapitated and that you pick up by the tail and eat with your head bent back. With onions on it for the best flavor. They have not been cooked, but only salted on board ship and the new herring is quite a treat. Everybody in the Netherlands eats herring like this. It’s a tradition. At one point when you are a child, you get a taste of one and you learn to like it and before long you are having your own whole herring. They are also good to eat on very dark rye bread. It’s a big
day every year when the fishing fleet comes back with the first new herring of the season. The herring is then judged to be either good or superb, depending on the fleshiness and firmness of it.

Writing about food is almost as good as eating it. I think I will be writing about it more than I will be eating it from this point on. It just depends on how many adjectives I can use to describe the food. Maybe I should become a restaurant critic. I could have little bites of food of each dish and everybody in the kitchen would worry about such a picky eater. I think a sushi restaurant would be the perfect place for me.

I just realized that today is Sunday and that means laundry day, amongst other things. It also means Eduard and Irene Sunday morning ritual day of staying in bed long and Eduard boiling eggs for brunch. I think I can’t wait that long for my food, though, and I will have some Maasdammer cheese before that time. We have no plans yet for today, but since I am in my hibernation mode, I don’t need for there to be any plans, really. Maybe we can ride our bikes downtown and sit on the terrace of our favorite café. It shouldn’t be too busy with tourists anymore now and the weather is still nice enough in the afternoon to sit outside.

I haven’t been to the chapel in such a long time and really feel no desire to go. It seems that all my religious curiosity and desires have disappeared for now. They really belonged to a very different mood. You see how I could never join a church, because I would only be an active and convinced member part of the year. I go from being completely convinced of my religious convictions, to not having any at all. It all leaves me totally indifferent now and I have no desire to ride my bike to the chapel and light a candle and say the Lord’s Prayer. I do kind of hope that it will come back, as it was a good time in my life, but for now I feel very little for my Higher Being and I am not aware of him/her performing any sort of function in my life at this point, when I was so convinced of it before. I am sure I was religiously manic for several months and I enjoyed the experience, but I can’t for the life of me get this feeling back now.

I have less enthusiasm about some other things too and I will blame it on my mood. I am a bit more withdrawn and contemplative and I don’t feel like getting all excited about what goes on there in the big wide world. Life certainly is not a techno color movie now. It is more like a very subdued low light art film in which the characters are unsure of their roles and their text and the director doesn’t always know what he is doing either. Maybe now I am in an Ingmar Bergman film and it is called Shadows of Memories.

Thank goodness there is Paint Shop to be creative and colorful with. I must make something every day, that’s a rule I made for myself. It doesn’t all have to be exuberant, but it does have to please me. I must feel some degree of satisfaction when I have made something and it also has to appeal to my sense of order. Therefor a mandala and a pattern. Always the two in pairs.

Well, now I’ve got to feed those darn cats again, they are waiting impatiently and Jesker is laying here by my feet, waiting to be walked. I do like my early morning rituals, though. They are nice ways to start the day and the animals are always so grateful and happy.

Have a wonderful day, everybody, ciao…

P.S. The images came of a photograph of a sparrow sitting on a branch in a snowy landscape.

Read Full Post »

Art and a poem.

Old Pisa Door 2

If on a summer evening late

You say that beauty is perishable

And the pregnant moon contradicts your words

Do not let yourself be dazzled by the planets

Which also have the eternal life.

And if in the night of the full moonlight

The stars glow as light publicity of god

Sleep not as a fallen angel

Forgotten by god and lost to me

And call me by my name in the glimmer of the morning.*

——————–

So, I have started to read Mythology for Dummies, which Eduard got for me from the library and which is just perfect reading for me when I go to bed at night and fall asleep after only reading a few pages. It talks about Greek mythology mostly, but also handles the lesser known mythologies of other cultures toward the end of the book. Of course, I haven’t gotten there yet. If it turns out to be too tedious, I may just read it during the day to get through it quickly so I can start on the novel from Iris Murdoch, which Eduard also got me from the library, which is called The Unicorn. I haven’t read anything by Iris Murdoch for awhile, the last novel was The Sea, The Sea, and I thought that was really good, so I have high hopes for this one.

Yesterday I spent some time playing with Paint Shop and at the instigation of the people who know, I didn’t open the manual, but started messing around with it on my own to see what sort of results that would give me. Luckily, this worked and I got some good results and I have posted some of those already and there will be more to come. The one above is originally of the old Pisa door, manipulated with the magic wand and the paint bucket with different colors and then I added special effects in different intensities to it. I am quite pleased with how it turned out.

Yesterday turned out to be an alright sort of day. After I wrote my post and walked the dog and fed the cats, I took my medicines and an Oxazepam and went back to bed to sleep some more. I had gotten up so early and the thought of crawling back under the duvet was more than I could resist. I woke up at 10:45 am and felt very refreshed and caught up on my sleep. I had some wonderful cups of Senseo and didn’t feel the least bit rushed to get the day started, so first I wrote a poem for Fawzan. I wrote it in Dutch first and then went to Babelfish for the translation into English, which turned out mostly right, but needed a little fixing on my part. It did come out a little bit gobbled at first, but it is always fun to see what Babelfish comes up with. It is a great invention on the Internet!

I walked the dog again, but we couldn’t go on the field as it was being cut by big noisy mowers. We steer well clear of them, so we just circled the field and Jesker got a special treat when we got home. He likes the Denta Sticks from Pedigree which are good for his teeth and he loves to chew on them. He very happily takes them to his pillow where he chews on them to his heart’s contend. You never saw such a happy dog. The cats decided that they were very hungry again as they followed me into the bathroom making pleading feed us sounds, so I opened up another little container of food and fed them. They ate with much vigor.

Then I really had to clean the apartment and I started with the kitchen, which is a non ending battle of dishes to be washed and dried and cat and dog bowls to be cleaned. I think we should start eating off paper plates and eat with disposable fork and knifes. O horror, what will the environmental police say about that! Luckily, Eduard has mostly stopped eating meat also, so there are none of the greasy pans to clean up and no grease spatters on the stove. It’s a definite benefit of eating vegetarian.

While cleaning the apartment, I really wanted to sit behind the computer some more and work with Paint Shop Pro 8, having been bitten by the bug, but I also turned on the film channel and watched the movie As it is in Heaven, which I had been waiting to see and which turned out to be a wonderful movie with much Swedish magic in it. It’s about a very famous conductor who for health reasons returns home to the place of his childhood and anonymously starts a choir there very successfully. Unluckily he dies, after he has fallen in love with a beautiful Swedish woman, while listening to the choir sing over the intercom at a festival in Innsbrück. A very bitter sweet ending. Leave it to the Swedes to not have a simple happily ever after story.

I took another Oxazepam in the afternoon, after having contacted my psychiatrist telling him that I was doing this now for the time being as long as I needed it. He knows that I will not abuse this privilege and that I will only use them when necessary and I have his blessing. It is such a wonderful way to relax, but to still keep functioning. It makes me feel mellow without making me feel stoned. I still have all of my faculties, but it just takes the sharp edges off. I took another one this morning and it is helping me write this post so calmly, yet coherently. The other alternative is turning to the booze, like I did in January and I think that is a bad alternative, so I won’t even go down that road.

I actually do feel better than I have for the past few days. I was feeling a bit stressed and uneasy for no obvious discernible reason that I knew of. Sometimes a mood just decides to settle in, whether I like it or not and I can’t always figure out where it comes from. Possibly they are very subtle things that bring it about, maybe it is like Beverley said: if a butterfly beats it’s wings in China…Maybe if I think there is something not quite right about the day and I can’t put my finger on it and then subsequently all things go slightly off after that, until they all feel wrong and it is like a snowball that tumbles down a hill getting larger and larger and I am unable to stop it, getting anxious and panicky along the way.

I have to remember yesterday’s lesson about angst and not
let it have a life of its own, independent of me. Angst can’t become a separate entity that lives in me. It has to stay as part of all of my feelings and not become a full blown thing of its own that dictates my mood and my subsequent actions. The Oxazepam removes the angst and lets me feel disregard for any imaginary anxieties that I have. Because many of my anxieties are imaginary, they are hardly ever about real things. They are just a lot of mind f***ing. I have a tendency to that and was very happy when I was taught this term many years ago by a therapist I was seeing. Angst causes you to do a lot of it.

My first therapist was very much into psycho analyses and had me read books like “I’m Okay, You’re Okay” and “Games People Play.” Although I was very depressed at the time, he did not give me that diagnosis and I wonder why he did not, or if he thought I was just a neurotic housewife from the suburbs. I stopped seeing him after eight months when suddenly one afternoon my depression lifted quite suddenly and I came into the opposite mood of cheerfulness and happiness. He said it was like black magic. I know now it was the bipolar disorder doing its thing.

To tel you the truth, I think there may be quite a few well intentioned but incompetent therapists out there who are not qualified to recognize it when people are dealing with chemical imbalances and should be put on medications. That was my experience anyway in the eighties and early nineties. Who think they can teach you coping skills and marriage skills and communication skills, but who don’t see that you are a mess of a depression sitting there. But then again, America is the land of therapists and it seems that anyone can be a therapist and claim to cure what ails you through all sorts of tried and untried methods.

Anyway, today I will have to vacuum and do the ironing as I see that Eduard is running low on T-shirts and we can’t have that. Will I be able to turn off the computer and take care of those things? I will have to force myself. It is funny how things slowly start to pile up when suddenly your interest gets caught by a new hobby that then becomes a compulsive activity. I think I have said earlier that I have to have the self discipline to actually turn the computer off after I have written a post and to not turn it on again until after I have done my chores. This is keeping in mind the electricity bill as well as me getting things done around here.

Well, it has been most amusing to sit here and ramble on like this, but I suppose that I will now end my words with this observation. When you have a dog and he very lovingly looks at you while he lays at your feet, don’t be fooled into thinking that you have to do all sorts of kind things for him. It is all a ruse to get another Denta Stick out of you and he can only have one a day. So, don’t do it!

Have a great day, everybody, ciao…

* Fawzan is having a poetry competition here. Join in the fun, it is open to all.

Read Full Post »

Amazed.

I am amazed again by all the things I saw when I visited my fellow bloggers websites. Some people are doing very interesting things in art and are explaining the process, leaving my eyes slightly glazed over with incomprehension. I see I need to go back to my Paint Shop book today and start learning more techniques, or I will fall way behind in the ability to manipulate images and I wont be able to participate in Rima’s next challenge here. I know I can manipulate images with effects, but I would like to try some other less magic things as well. Things I really need to make up on my own.

This morning I weigh 92.7 kilos and I have pretty much decided that I need to stop eating the raisin crackers, because I like them too much, and switch back to eating Melba toast and cheese again. The raisin crackers are very addictive to eat and once I start eating them, I can’t stop myself, regardless of the gastric band. I think they may be too fattening and I should just quit them all together. Right, is that a decision I have just made? I think so and I will have to tell Eduard about it so he doesn’t buy me more at the store. I think I made this same decision some time ago and then I didn’t stick to it, but now I really have to if I am going to lose those final 12 kilos.

The gastric band is only working to some extent, it does prevent me from eating a regular meal, but it still allows me to eat too much to lose weight. It will have to be filled again and I will have to start eating less. I have two apples left that I can eat today, but the good cheese is all gone and so are the little containers of potato salad that I like so much. Maybe that’s for the better too. Of course, when you eat so little, you look forward to those special treats of food and some foods take on a lot of importance in your life. But I do think that I need to have a little more self discipline and not eat things that are obviously fattening.

Yesterday was a wonderful day. Eduard and I took our time getting started in the morning, but once we were up and about, we really got started well. We changed the bed and I did three loads of laundry, one of which I was able to dry outside. We put clean sheets on the bed that had been dried outside and that smelled of the sun and the wind. I cleaned up the kitchen and washed all the dishes until they were squeaky clean and I notice that I like cleaning house better when Eduard is home. He motivates me to really get things done. I even remembered to water the very thirsty plants on the windowsill, but I really need to get some new plants as these are just barely hanging on to life. I walk around the apartment with a soapy rag and find things to clean. I don’t care that it is Sunday and I really shouldn’t be doing any of these things, as it is still considered a day of rest. When I see a dirty toilet, I clean it and the same goes for the washbasin.

In between things, I walk the dog and hang out on the field with him where we watch the other dogs go by. Jesker and I pretend that we own the field and that we grant the other dogs permission to use the field only if they pay the proper respect to us. That means they have to behave themselves and not do anything as out of place as bark at us or poop in the middle of it.

Eduard had a toothache and is afraid that he needs a root canal treatment because the pain was down in his jaw. He took Ibuprofen and laid down in the bed at one point, feeling slightly sick to his stomach. We watched a French film in the afternoon called 36 Quai des Orfevres, starring Gérard Dépardieu, in which he played a bad cop who got killed in the end, after he had wrecked the lives of some innocent people. Boy, he really knows how to play the bad, disagreeable guy. I absolutely felt no sympathy for him.

In the evening, there was a documentary on BBC 2 about a national park in Croatia, that is a primeval forest, with many rivers and waterfalls and lakes and lots of wildlife, that is the oldest forest in Europe. It is called Prilvice or also Luka, land of the wolves. It is very beautiful there, a true wilderness, and I for one was completely unaware that this place existed, but then there is a lot about the Balkan countries that we don’t know yet. When the war broke out in the Balkans in 1991, this forest was directly in danger and the deer population was almost wiped out, but now the ecology is findings its precarious balance again. There are wolves there and bears and deer and wild pigs and wild cats, that look just like domestic cats, but they are truly wild and ferocious. It would be a wonderful place to visit, providing you had the right guides and a gun to protect yourself.

I am reading my art history book when I go to bed. So I am not doing a lot of reading due to falling asleep very quickly. Eduard turns off my light and takes off my reading glasses and puts my book down. Not necessarily in that order. I don’t remember my dreams, which I think is a shame, especially since Jung talks about dreams so much and the importance of them and the symbolism in them. I was planning on having some very symbolic dreams, but now I am not having any of them at all that I can remember. You would think I would dream about art at least, but I am not even doing that.

I am trying to find a good way to deal with my friend Lucien who is very insecure and wants me to call her often. When I don’t call her often enough, she calls me and asks me why. Then she sits and worries about the slightest innocent remark that I make and calls me about that. I am starting to feel just a little bit claustrophobic . I want her to not be so insecure and to not spend so much time worrying about every little thing I say. I don’t want to have to censor myself continuously. I also don’t want to feel that I have to call her after a certain amount of days have gone by. I want to call her spontaneously, when I feel like it, but I suppose she needs more than that. This is a friendship that needs a little bit of work and I don’t know how happy I am about that. I feel some resistance on my part and I know that means that I am not happy with the way things are going. I am trying to remember if this is why we stopped seeing each other before and I think it may have been.

I don’t have much to say today. I have no topics to discuss on my mind. I am not feeling very inspired one way or the other about anything. Some days are like that. On top of that, my hands are itching very much and I keep having the terrible urge to scratch a lot, preventing me from typing.

So, I think I will leave it here and say so long for now. I must go back and comment on the posts I have read earlier.

Have a great day, all of you. Hopefully you will all be more inspired than I am today. Ciao…

Read Full Post »

Art and thoughts.

I am sitting here having my third cup of coffee after having visited my fellow blogger’s websites. As is usual, I read some interesting posts and saw some interesting images. It is always good to see what is keeping other people occupied, because it is all so diverse and so different from what I myself get excited about. Reading their blogs reminds me to pay attention to all sorts of other things besides that which plays in my own head and that is pleasant. It is good to be exposed to other people’s sentiments and preoccupations. It makes my little world bigger and gives me food for thought. It makes me feel excited about some things and curious about others. It reminds me to not only live in my own head, with my own thoughts, but to reach out and occupy myself with other issues and other items of interest.

Being the introverted thinker that I am, I realize that a lot of living takes place in my own head. All that I see and read and experience gets processed silently inside my own quiet self. I analyze and ponder and judge and deduct and deduce and come to conclusions. My mind is like a quietly humming computer that independently of other people comes to its compilations. I always feel that I have to do this on my own, without the hindrance of other people. I very rarely accept the opinions of the people around me anyway, unless I value them very highly, like I do Eduard.

When I discover something of value, I am loathe to share it, lest it be made less valuable by the dilution of sharing. I keep things in their world where they belong. I don’t take them out of their context into another world where they don’t belong. Things and people stay powerful in their world and in their framework. Taking them out would make them less valuable and compelling. They would lose their enchantment by coming in touch with a less than appreciative audience. If I think they will not be given the proper appreciation and reverence, I will not share them. I will not share ideas and concepts and people with an audience which is incapable of grasping the basic fundamentals. I will not try to convert them to my new point of view or share with them my discovery. I feel that they should be able to make that journey on their own, otherwise my fortune will be wasted on them. I keep my worlds separated and detached.

Now you are all saying, but Irene, you are always sharing your ideas with us! Yes, I know, but you all belong to this world. The world of my blog in which I share my thoughts and sentiments. In this world, I trust all of you with my inner world. My inner world exists out in the open only in this world. Very few people in the other world get to be part of it. In the other world, I am a quiet observer. I watch and think. I observe and process. I am a woman of quiet deeds there. I don’t think out loud like I do here.

Anyway, a little bit about the workings of my mind and about the two worlds that I live in. The quiet world of here where I sit and the verbal world of there where I write. Aren’t I glad that I have these two! Happier than a cat in a barn full of mice.

I have decided that for a few days at least, I am partly on a sabbatical. I am on a sabbatical from the computer. That means that after I have read other people’s blogs and have written my own, the computer is off and I don’t turn it on again all day long. It is strictly forbidden. Instead I read and watch films. I was sitting behind the computer too much, not switching it off anymore at all, but going back to it compulsively, neglecting other parts of my life and I don’t want to do that. So, I have to bring some semblance of self discipline back into my days and make room for other things as well. For a few days at least, the computer gets switched off and is staying off. I read books and watch films , which are things I had been neglecting to do.

Yesterday I watched a film called The King, which was strange but compelling. The odd thing was that it starred William Hurt as a Southern preacher and I thought it was such a strange role for him with his bald head and large sideburns. I remember him much younger and more radical and now he looked like an elderly middle aged man in polyester shirt and pants with cowboy boots. It was very odd. He was very believable, don’t get me wrong, I really saw him as that preacher. I disliked him as that preacher and I think I was meant to dislike him as that preacher. He did a good job.

I tried to read The Hero With A Thousand Faces some more, then realized I couldn’t, but luckily the mailman brought the new book on Carl Jung and I could start to read that. Unluckily, it is turning out to be not such a good book, so I am not even going to give you the title. It is basically a synopsis of his life followed by a large selection of quotes from his work and letters. It is only mildly interesting and not worth the money I spent on it. That’s the chance you take when you order a book on line. The next books I read about Jung will have to come from the library where I can reject what I want without the financial loss. It really is a shame to buy a book that doesn’t live up to your expectations. It is okay if I want to extensively quote Jung, I guess.

I got my art history book out and decided to start reading about art in the mid 19th century going into the 20th century. I am having a bit of a hard time remembering every body’s name. I do see the movement, though, from romantic realism into realism and post realism. That’s where I am at now, but I do fall asleep with it, which is not conducive to learning a lot. I would love a lecture with slides, or would that be a power point presentation now? I suppose I am very pedestrian in my taste in art. I seem to like what everybody likes, that is all the most popular paintings. Or is that only because that is what I am exposed to? Or do we all share the common vision of beauty and symmetry? I would like to think that I can pick out beauty especially well, but I suppose that I don’t own the rights to that.

I do think I know what ugliness is. Or banality or mediocrity. I think I am evolved enough to discern quality from inability. Do any of you remember the painter Grandma Moses? I think her work was beautiful and had quality, but so thought many other people. You very rarely discover an artist who has not already been discovered by very many other people. Well, a person like me doesn’t. It seems that when I like something very much, a thousand other people like it that much already. I am purposely not mentioning any artists now that I can think of.

I don’t know how exciting it is to be alive in the art movement now, as I don’t know anything about today’s art movement. As I said before, I tried to appreciate some of today’s modern art and I didn’t, even when it came highly praised. I wonder what sort of criteria you have to apply now to be considered a revolutionary artist. Art should still be about emotions, right? It should still move you, shouldn’t it? I want to feel some very basic emotions moved when I look at a piece of art, I don’t know, excitement, tenderness, exuberance, love. I want to feel that I could have made that coming out of my emotions if I had the skill and talent. If it has a story to tell, then that is fine, but the story shouldn’t be four pages long before I understand it.

I am rehashing myself. I have said these things before. I think we should treasure our artists and reward them with laurel wreaths. Put them on a pedestal and wine them and dine them. Build colonies for them to thrive in. Although it may be that suffering brings about great art, I don’t know, and maybe artists
need to have a life that is also tormented and earthly and achingly human. Does beauty escape from chaos? Is it tormented beauty?

I suppose you want people to experience all of life and to express that in their art without the experiences of life debilitating them too much. Crippling them to the point of non creativeness. I suppose we wanted Vincent van Gogh to be somewhat tormented but not to the point of suicide. I suppose one can also suffer from agonizing bouts of euphoria and create great works then. It must be necessary to feel an extreme of some emotion, some extra movement of something. It can’t come out of a plain, ordinary, every day, ‘I think I won’t vacuum today’ mood. Do you create great art in a rational mood? It is a legitimate question that I don’t have the answer to, as I only seem to be really creative when in turmoil. Do you say rationally, “Today I will be very creative and I will create something very moving and appealing.”?

Well, it is starting to be that time of the morning again. The animals are gathering around me. The dog is asleep by my feet and the cats are waiting patiently. I think I need to get going and feed them and walk Jesker. I always very much enjoy sitting here writing this, but an end has to be made some time.

Have a really terrific day, be the best that you can be in all that you do, even the least of it, ciao…

P.S. When I talk about creating art, I mean art as opposed to craft, which you can produce by being skillful. You can be a good craftsman or woman without being a great artist. I suppose you can be skillful without being inspired, you would just have to be patient and good at your craft. I think my father, who handmade copies of antique clocks, inside and out, was a craftsman and not an artist. I wonder if someone who is a strictly realistic painter now, is an artist or a craftsman? I mean someone who almost photographically records what is in front of him. There is some discussion about that here about an artist like that. If he should be included in a regional museum or not as an artist of note. For a sample of his work go here. His name is Henk Helmantel.

Read Full Post »