Hurricane Ike.

As I write this, my daughter is being besieged in Houston by the back end of hurricane Ike. I have been following it live on http://www.khou.com/video. She was one of the people who was advised not to evacuate, leaving the freeways clear for the people who did have to evacuate. I haven’t talked to her since last night when she was making the last preparations for the hurricane to come in. She had taped the windows, so they would not shatter, and had gotten all sorts of supplies from the store. I am trying to understand all the information I am hearing on the live reporting, but I am unfamiliar with a lot of the areas and neighborhoods that they are describing. I will try to call her later this evening and try to find out how she is doing. I am sure she is fine, being the eternal optimist that i am. They are without power and I may not be able to get a hold of her. We”ll see.

In the meantime, I am sitting here quite uselessly waiting for the delivery person to get here and isn’t it always so that when you are waiting specifically for them to come, they show up at the end of the afternoon, when it could have been any time of the day. I just walked the Überhund, because he had to go out and I taped a note to the door saying that I would be back in the shortest amount of time, but she did not come. I need to go to the store to buy tobacco and hope she gets here before the store closes. It’s all a bit a pain in the neck, but nothing compared to hurricane Ike, of course.

This morning I was out briefly, but I knew my neighbor was home and I know the delivery person would have left the packages with her if she had not found me home. I had coffee and a little piece of pie with my sister and her in laws and even the tiny little piece of pie was too much and I had to make an emergency trip to the bathroom. But it tasted good going down and I learned another lesson after having had my gastric band filled recently. There is always a period of adjustment when I have to learn again how much I can eat.

It’s now 8 PM and I’ve tried to call my daughter, but I only got her voice mail. I am sure she is fine though, going by my maternal instincts. I refuse to picture all sorts of worst case scenarios in my head. Besides, it seems that the hurricane didn’t do as much damage as they had expected. I will see this positively.

The delivery person didn’t show up and I have a sneaking suspiscion that she was here this morning while I was out, while she normally does not get here until noon or later. Oh well, she will be back on Monday, I am sure.

Now rests to me the task to tell you something entertaining and I don’t have one bloody entertaining thing to tell you. Frankly, my dears, I am going to put on my pajamas and make myself comfortable on the sofa and watch the silly box for a while. I’ve just walked the Überhund and that will have to do for tonight, he can piddle out back if he wants to later.

So ciao to you and you and you and you…

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Full of it.

I had two pieces of toast early this morning and it is now almost 1 PM and I still feel very full, as a matter of fact, I am burping, so that gastric band is really doing its job. Usually, around this time, I would have been eating again, but I don’t feel like it yet. Even the vitamin pills that I took this morning made me feel full, well, they were quite a handfull. That reminds me that I have to look for Omega 3 capsules, because they are supposed to be good for whatever ails you and I do want to add them to the supplements I take. I also want to be taking those kelp tablets again as a supplement to my thyroid medication. You see, I am on a real health kick. I’ve got all my bottles neatly lined up on the kitchen windowsil, next to the Überhund’s pills, so I don’t forget to take them.

Just now, out of the blue, and anticipating some money I will get for my birthday, I ordered a new tunic on line and some ankle boots. They were both very reasonably priced, so I don’t feel all that bad, and it is my birthday and it made me happy. Happy people live longer, I’m convinced of it, so do people who look good. The better looking you are, the longer you live, it’s a theory I have that anyone can shoot holes through without any effort, I know. I need my fantasies, don’t I?

I’ve done the grocery shopping and bought the Überhund some reatively expensive dog food especially for older dogs. He had not been eating well lately and I worried about him getting all his vitamins and minerals. So, I brought this food home and put some in his dish and he ate most of it, so he seems to like it. Which is another relief, because about dog food, he is a picky eater. This stuff is called Benifull, I don’t know if any of you have ever heard of it. It is a no nonsense dog food without all the colors and shapes. The same as the food that the cats are getting now. The colors and shapes are there only for us humans, after all.

I vacuumed the kitchen and the living room and the hallway and the sofa and the chairs. I bet I have to do it again tomorrow before the Exfactor and my sister come.  I bought them each a pastry, but I got none for me. I figure I can’t eat that and I don’t need it anyway. I did buy a container of fresh juice, so that is different than the soda I usually buy. More calories too. I am trying to be very conscious about my health and what little I eat, has to be healthy. That’s why I buy the really good bread and not the factory bread and the margarine with the good start vitamins in it. It’s a bit more expensive, but then I eat so little that I can afford it.

The thing I don’t eat anymore is eggs. For some reason they don’t agree with me and i always end up upchucking them, the same with cheese, I can’t eat that either. I can eat yogurt and curd, lovely with fruit in them and then the non fat kind. I sure am lucky that I live in the dairy country, there is a infinite choice of dairy products and varieties, although there probably is all over Western Europe.

I always make a list before I go to the store and stick to it, otherwise there is too much temptation to buy other things as well, like those little containers of potato salad that I like so well, or the chocolate mousse. I must stick to the shopping list and if I want to cheat, I have to write it on the shopping list beforehand, otherwise I don’t get it. There will not be much cheating now. My stomach feels so full.

Anyway, I don’t do much impulse buying. Very rarely do I buy something that is not on the list and I very rarely let myself buy something that is advertised and that I was not plannning on buying, unless it is something I know I will use in the very near future. Like the cleansing towelettes for my face that I bought this week that were on sale. That is an exception. I am probably a rotten client for the supermarket, but I am steady. I do tend to buy products that are on sale if I was planning on buying some of that already, like dishwashing liquid. If the expensive stuff is on sale, I buy that. I don’t buy cheap items just because they are cheap, many times they are inferior and you get a bad product. Like hairspray, for instance. I bought the cheap one once and regretted it very much, because my hair was like a sticky bunch of spiderwebs.

I just took the Überhund for a walk and he was his usual scrounging street dog self again. Anything that was even remotely edible ended up in his mouth from where I can not dislodge it.  I don’t even try anymore. It is a lost battle for me, he suffers the consequences, except that he doesn’t seem to put two and two together. His instincts are lost to him. Dumb dog.

I saw the strangest woman.  She looked like a stereo typical gypsy woman and she had a small child with her. She even wore those kinds of clothes and had the skin color and the black hair done up in a lose bun and a weather beaten face. It looked like she was a character out of another time, that’s how much she stood out. I was quite startled, because you don’t see many real gypsies around here and she was so very much like one. She had a cigarette dangling from her mouth and she seems a bit uncouth as if she had a chip on her shoulder. She may have been Rumanian. They have a tough life and can’t seem to assimilate, but I can’t figure out what she was doing here. It’s a puzzlement. When I came back, she was gone. Another mystery for Miss Marple.

One streets over, they are having a block party. The street is blocked off and a big party tent has been put up. Various cables lead to the tent and I saw a big barbecue. That should be fun. You see a lot of streets organize these kinds of things. I don’t see our street doing it. We are not cohesive enough. We’re only on saying hello terms.

For some reason my spell check has stopped working and if I do want to double check a word, it gives me a Ducth option, even though I have my language settings in English. It also does this in comments on Blogger and on facebook. Something screwy going on. We are now in the Twilight Zone.

I have two scabs on my left arm that I keep pulling off, not allowing them to heal. It’s a nervous habit that I have. Every time there is a scab, I pull it off and the whole process has to start all over again. I am trying not to do it, but it almost is like an automism, I have to do it. I like pulling off scabs. This way I always look like the walking wounded and people always ask what I have done to my arm, when it is realy nothing at all. I must stop doing that.

I haven’t put my face on yet and went to the store with a bare naked face. Sometimes it is nice not to bother with your make up for awhile. I am going to check in my closet to see what I am going to wear, because what I have on now, I was wearing yesterday and I need some excitement in my life. Pick out a different necklace too. You never know which jehova witness is going to show up at the door.

I think I will go do that now and clean the bathroom. I almost can’t stand the excitement in my life. I could have gone into town today, but it is too much effort and it will be busy and I will have to walk over the heads of the tourists. Oh, those ankle boots I ordered are so cute, but I don’t get them until next week. That’s a long wait when you are impatient.

I just got a card from my oldest sister witha large gift of money in it. That will take ample care of the clothes I ordered. See how it all works out?

Have a good one.

Ciao…

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I did it!

I wrote that one letter of objection that I thought was going to be the hardest one and that I was putting off until last, but I had written it in my head quite a few times already, so when the time came to sit down and write it, it went quite easily. I sat down and wrote it in long hand first and then typed it and referred to the attachments that I had numbered and I think it all was rather comprehensive and understandable. It is very important to back up your statements with the right documentation, so I made sure I included everything I could think off. I have visited the copier in the grocery store quite a few times now this week. I have just about used up all my nickels and dimes.

It’s a relief to get it all done and now I have to wait for the various outcomes. I feel like a little person fighting the big system with every bit of arsenal I’ve got. I’ve got to try and do my best, though. If I don’t do it, I’ll forever regret it.

This morning I went and had my gastric band filled some more. I took the bus to the hospital, which takes all of 8 minutes including all the stops it makes. I like taking the bus, because there is a big bridge across the railroad tracks I would have to take if I went by bike and I’m not quite up to it. The bus is an enjoyable way to travel, because you get to people watch, which is one of my hobbies. I like it when there are little kids on the bus, because they provide some comic relief and grab everyone’s attention with their sweet little faces and their shenanigans.

Now I can eat a little less than I did before, which is good and the whole purpose of it. I just had toast and I am very full. I had cup a soup earlier and it had the same effect. I won’t be able to eat that pudding with berry sauce anymore, but that is good. That was cheating anyway. For a person who used to get such joy out of eating, this certainly is a very different life style.

On Sunday it’s my birthday. I will be 54 years old. The Exfactor and my sister are coming over in the morning for coffee and pie. The Exfactor send a card in the mail that I got today, but I’m not allowed to open it until Sunday. It’s a thick card, it feels like there is something in it. It is very hard not to open it, but I’ll be good.

My sister’s husband is moving out this Saturday. They have made arrangements for when he has the children. My sister can’t wait for him to move out, every hour that he is still there is one too many. She has finally gotten over her adoration of him and it is about time. It was not normal the way she looked up to him and the way he treated her. Now all of us sisters will be single and we will all be emancipated women, although my oldest sister is not so by choice. Still, she finds herself to be very emancipated and that is the good part. Somewhow, comng from the dysfunctional family that we did, we do all manage okay on our own and are not helpless females, even though some of us started out that way in our late teens – early twenties.

I just took the Überhund for a walk. Without me noticing it, it had rained again, just a short shower, and evrything was nice and fresh. I had to cut back the jasmine that I planted in the pot, to the part where there were new little leaves growing, so it lookes kind of puny right now, but I am full of hope. Close to our house, a weed filled piece of land was cleared and smoothed out and grass seed was sprinkled on it and now little blades of grass are popping up out of the ground. It is an amazing thing. You think nothing will come of it, but somehow it does. We are very lucky to live in a neighborhood with lots of open spaces with grass and trees, although I do notice that the clover and the dandelions take over most of the grassy areas.

It’s oh so silent here. There is hardlly a sound coming in from outside. Thank goodness that this is a quiet neighborhood. The teenagers next door get kind of rowdy sometimes, but just very briefly and not at night. The boy thinks he is quite a guitar player and he has an electric one with an amplifier  that he turns up every once in a while. He just doesn’t quite have the talent. It’s all a lot of noise and he’ll never play for Linkin Park. The girl has a good voice and is pleasant to listen to.

Well, it’s pajama time again, and toast time and TV time. Tomorrow I will sleep late, hah, watch me do it until 7 AM and that’s it.

Have a great day,

Ciao…

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Where?

I don’t know where the day has gone. It seems to have been extremely long and forever since I got up out of bed this morning, yet at the same time it seems like it flew by and I didn’t accomplish half the things that I wanted to. Maybe I have been trapped in a wormhole in space and I have traveled through time in a different way than I ordinarily do.

When I look back at this morning, it seems very far away, as if I am looking at it the wrong way around through binoculars. I see myself way in the distance, starting the day with a mug of coffee. Maybe people with busy lives always have that feeling, as if they are far removed from the beginning. It feels kind of discombobulating, as if I have been stretched longer than the day is wide.

This morning, at creative therapy, I uncovered all those upside down pictures I had glued down with the medium I told you about. I took a sponge with warm water and soaked each picture until I was able to rub the backs off them to reveal the image that was underneath and glued down on the paper. It was actually kind of neat, if not very time consuming, but I rubbed the paper of with my thumbs until it got all crumbly and revealed the picture that i had forgotten was there. The images are imperfect and they should be, I don’t want them to be completely intact, they have hairline scratches and frayed edges, which makes them more interesting. I did about 20 of them and I am nearly done.

Next, I’ll be applying the different layers of paint around them and maybe slightly over them. Applying and wiping away etc. I’m learning as I go along. I am sure that what I am making is going to be a masterpiece.

When I had been home for about 10 minutes, the Exfactor rang the door bell. I thought he was going to come over while I was gone in the morning, but I think he is looking for company and someone to have a cup of coffee and a conversation with. He came to get motor parts. He does that a lot, doesn’t he? Anyway, we had coffee and a conversation and then he was on his way again after he left me with a whole roll of biscuits that he had left over and wasn’t going to eat. Well, I don’t say no to those.

Then I took the Überhund to the vet, but it was not our regular vet, because he is on vacation. This time it was a female vet and the Überhund didn’t want anything to do with her. Every time she tried to look in his eye, he turned away his face and hid it under my arm. She finally determined that his eye was almost better and that I need to apply the eye drops a little while longer. She was able to take his temperature in an uncomfortable place and he didn’t seem to mind that one bit. Strange dog.

When we got home, I cleaned the apartment the French way, that is with a lick and a promise, but here we always call it the French way, because I had to go for a check up for my gastric band. I took the bus to the hospital and the bus was late , but I made it on time and then tried to check in under my married name, forgetting that I had already changed it in the administration to my maiden name. So, they had no appointment in my name, but soon everything was cleared up and my old file was found which had been lost because of the name change. It was a regular comedy of errors.

Anyway, I have lost 7 kilos and we are going to fill my gastric band one more time on the 5th of September. Usually it takes longer to get an appointment, but they happened to have an opening…

…It is now the next day as I had to stop writing, because I was so darn tired. I laid down on the sofa and promptly fell asleep. I woke up long enough to go to bed properly.

So, when I got home from the hospital, I walked the Überhund and made a shopping list and did the grocery shopping, which you should never do on an empty stomach, but I stuck to the list. It’s amazing though how quickly your shopping basket fills up and how quickly you spend the money. I had one big shopping bag full of groceries and spent 32 Euros. I still have to look at the receipt to see what I spent it all on.

Thanks to the Wise Web Woman I stumbled upon a website called StumbleUpon. It’s really neat. You fill out what sort of things you are interested in and they find the websites for you. You give those a thumbs up or down so they can narrow the search. They save the websites you like for you so that you can go back and look at them better at a later time. I have found some great websites already this way, like this one or this one. This one is also interesting.

Well, you can see what sort of addiction your computer can become when you blog and do Facebook and do StumbleUpon. I was trying to be a member of some other groups as well, but it was all too much and I quit those, fun as some of them were. Try Plurk, for instance, if you dare. It’s not for me. Too involved.

Shoot, I need to go back to bed, I think, not enough sleep yet. Kicking and screaming I will make myself go back to bed. Or drink a liter of coffee.

Anyway, you all have a good one of whatever you are having.

Ciao…

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Breakfast Cake.

I was greedy and ate 3 slices of breakfast cake and now I positively feel sick to my stomach and I am sitting here feeling awfully bad. Breakfast cake is very dense and filling and it is customary to put butter on it, so I’ve had quite a meal. I feel it slowly making its way past my gastric band and in a short amount of time I should be feeling better. Sometimes I do the thing that is absolutely the worst for me, when my eyes are literally bigger than my stomach. Foolish woman, Irene.

I should be at my creative therapy now, but I didn’t sleep enough last night and at 8AM I went back to bed for some more sleep. I was sitting on the sofa, waiting for it to be time to leave, and I was nodding off, so I called and left a message to say that I would not be there. I like going to creative therapy too, so I hate to miss the class, but sometimes you just have to.

Cute little Gandhi just jumped on my lap for some loving and that means I cease all activity and push the keyboard under the desk, because she’ll walk on it and cause strange things to happen. So we cuddle and she purrs until it has been enough and she leaves again. I just have to be patient and wait for her to get done rubbing her head against my chin and hands. She’s such an affectionate little cat, you just can’t ignore her or push her away, at least I can’t.

The Überhund was his normal affectionate self this morning. He just could not get close enough to me and was in danger constantly of being run over by the desk chair. He waits for me by the bathroom door while I get ready and no cat is allowed to enter while I am in there. He growls at them if they try, which is very antisocial of him, but he just thinks we belong together and that no other animal may interfere at that point. He sneezes when I apply hairspray and then he follows me to the bedroom and sneezes again when I apply perfume. That’s true dedication for you.

I hope this is not going to be another lazy day, because I’ve had enough of those now. Judging by the look of the weather outside, it is not going to be a hot day, so I think some vigorous house cleaning will be able to get done. In other words, it doesn’t look like holiday weather.

It’s almost impossible not to upset the cat population when I pull out the vacuum cleaner. Some of them pretend to be brave, but eventually they all go into hiding and I need to pull it out so often, especially now with the fleas that I am combating. Fleas don’t like me and if I scratch my head, it’s from my eczema and not from a flea bite.

I see people drive down our street and the ‘sleeping gendarme’ does slow them down a bit, but I think they didn’t make it high enough. It should have been a wee bit higher so people would have some serious damage to their cars if they really didn’t slow down enough. As it is, it is still too dangerous to let your kids play out there. When we were kids, we played all over the place and that included the street, that was our playground.

We lived in a tiny little house in a street with tiny little houses that were about 80 years old when I was born there. This was post war Holland and there was a terrible shortage of housing and people were cramped in everywhere. We had a shower and a toilet built on to the kitchen in the back of the house. Some families had numerous children and they all lived in those tiny houses, but it was a wonderful street to grow up in, because there were all these kids to play with and we were all very tight and loyal and we never had fights with each other, just terrible disloyalty and fights with the kids on the next street over. So, we didn’t enter each other’s streets.

My 85 year old neighbor just came by with two English language letters claiming he had won a tremendous amount of money if he would just send in the details of his credit card and pay 29.95 Euros. So, I explained to him what it said in the letters and looked the companies up on line and very quickly found out that they were both scams and I also found out that he had been playing along with them for a while already. I told him, if you get anymore of this kind of mail, come to me and I will read it for you to find out what it is all about. Poor old guy, thought maybe he had won a lot of money.

Well, sorry people, I’ve got to stop now and get going. I am running behind schedule and I feel terribly rushed.

Have a great day and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do… What?

Ciao…

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Odd behavior.

For some strange reason, which I am not in the least concerned about, I am back to falling asleep early at night and waking up in the wee hours of the morning. It seems to be a natural way for me to get through my 24 hours of the day and it is only a problem if I can’t get a nap in some time during the day. Usually I manage that some time in the morning, but this morning I have to go to creative therapy and I hope I can find an interesting activity that will keep me awake and alert.

It is confusing to the Uberhund when I get up so early and he comes out with a look of doubt on his face and has me pet him a lot to be reassured that everything is okay. Then he hesitatingly walks back to the bedroom to get some more sleep,  because he is a sensible dog.  I think he really likes the nighttime when he doesn’t have to be alert and present and he can really fall into a deep sleep.

My sister came back from her vacation yesterday and had a nice tan to show for it. She looked great, but she was wearing the wrong clothes, because it was very cool and rainy here. Her soon to be ex husband and she took turns spending a week each with their kids in an apartment in a small town on the Costa Brava, where the kids learned how to scuba dive. Apparently, this is a town where Spanish people go on holiday and there weren’t many foreigners there and the food was delicious.

It is impossible now for me to talk about food with any pleasure at all, as my gastric band seems to have gotten tighter and the portions I can eat comfortably have gotten much smaller over the past two weeks. I had to make some adjustments for that and was overeating at first and suffering with the results of that with pain and regurgitation. I now have figured out how much I can eat all at once and it is very little and I think that the gastric band will not have to be filled again.

I had heard that this sometimes happens. That some weeks after it has been filled again, it suddenly seems to get tighter and you can eat less all of the sudden. When you are not aware of that at first, you make the mistake of eating the same portions you were and getting sick.

So, to me eating food is very much about being physically hungry now and nothing else, because I associate it with discomfort and not with pleasure. I really have to think about how much I am going to eat and about when I will eat again and if what I eat will be nourishing and filling enough to last a while. There can be no empty calories, there has to be nutrition in them. Yesterday, for instance, I had a piece of toast of some very good bread. One hour later, I tried to eat a one egg omelet, but only could eat a few bites of it and I was disgustingly full and had to stop eating and give the rest to the Uberhund.

Hey, I would be a very cheap guest if I came to stay at your house, it takes so little to feed me and you wouldn’t have to take me out to a restaurant or anything. I can’t even eat the kid’s menu or an appetizer.

Actually, I would make a lousy house guest, because I smoke and drink coffee constantly and you won’t let me do that at your house, so, unless you have a nice climate and a comfortable veranda to sit on, I won’t be coming by any time soon. I do so hate to give up my pleasures.

Well, that’s it for me for today. I must go and try to eat some toast and stare at my navel for a little while in my ever decreasing stomach. Did you know that I have a very hollow navel, because the midwife put a heavy coin on it to make it an “innie”, only the coin was too heavy? Maybe my mother told a great big fib and I will go on believing this even though it isn’t true at all.

Ciao…

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Really!?

Eduard has asked me not to write about him anymore unless it is in a businesslike way and he has asked me not to write about Lieve at all and especially not by her name. From now on I will refer to Eduard as Ed and Lieve as Lovey and I have suggested to Ed that he stops reading my blog. It’s a two edged sword, reading the blog of your ex wife. Enough said about that. Gggrrrhhh…

Being up early is the exception that proves the rule. I went to bed on time because I was just worn out, but I just woke up in the middle of the night all wide awake and ready to get up and have a coffee and a cigarette and maybe write a post.

Anyway, yesterday afternoon Ed and I went to my bank were he was taken off my bank account and my name was changed back to my maiden name. I also changed the account to an Internet bank account and automatically had a savings account attached to it, which is kind of neat, because i wanted that anyway. When I left the bank, the woman who had helped me shook my hand and said, “Goodbye Mrs S**ders,” which I truly appreciated, being addressed by my own name.

Even when I am home, I am filling out forms or on the telephone making calls to get things organized, but I think today will be a fairly calm day, because Ed has been so kind as to offer to go all the way to the housing corporation to pick up the rental contract for this apartment for me, which I need next week for my appointment with Social Services. The housing corporation is a long bike ride away from here and I really didn’t feel like making it and asked him to do me the favor. I have however been riding my bike an awful lot and have lost a couple of kilos these past weeks. Of course, I haven’t been eating that much either, what with my gastric band having been tightened and I subsist on a small amount of food.

Yesterday afternoon I was supposed to meet Ed at his work, but they were in a meeting there and I walked over to Café Monopole and had a glass of dry white wine on the terrace all by myself and it was very cozy. I watched the people walk by and watched the people watch me. Then I went over to M&S Fashion and bought a top on sale for 9 Euros. See, I do know how to amuse myself. Oh, that reminds me, I have to do my tiny little bit of shopping at the grocery store today. It’s so funny, the small amount of food I have to buy, even when you include the food for the animals.

I just got completely distracted making a shopping list and then I started to organize the kitchen shelves, but I see I need to do a proper cleaning and I better finish this post first, but it is funny that I can clean up the kitchen at 3:30 in the morning and not bother anyone. It’s amazing the things I can do at any time of the day, but especially during the small hours of the night. Those are the neatest hours.

Well, now I am going to end this post, because there are some glass jars that need a good cleaning and that need to be filled with some interesting things, such as different teas. Oh, such fun!

Have an absolutely smashing day and make sure you get enough sleep. not like me here who has a screwy schedule.

Ciao…

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Contemplation.

I am writing this in addition to the post below that I published this morning, so by all means go and read that. I just felt like sitting here and putting some more thoughts on paper. Ha, it looks like paper, but it isn’t.

After I walked Jesker, I laid down on the sofa with the classical music MP3 plugged into my ears and fell sleep for another hour, which was quite pleasant, as I wasn’t quite done sleeping yet. I seem to constantly surround myself with music nowadays with every activity I do, where before I always had peace and quiet to the point that you could hear a pin drop. What a difference that suddenly is. I don’t know how that came about, really, but suddenly there was this need for music. ‘The time for silence had ended.

My daughter sent me some links for yoga and tai chi in Maastricht. She thinks it will be good for my body and mind to participate in one of these activities and I think she may be right. I am going to look into it. The tai chi sounds very interesting, but it is taught in a castle just over the border in Belgium and I may have a hard time getting there. We’ll see, there are all sorts of possibilities. I have done yoga in the past and I know it is something very pleasant to do. There used to be a woman who gave yoga lessons through the regional psychiatric center, but I don’t know if she still does that. I’ll have to ask about it.

I am undergoing the pleasant effects of my medications. It is such a pleasing experience when I feel them working. It is almost as good as having a whole body massage, but then in your mind, because it has the same effect. If I am the least bit uptight beforehand, I know it will be gone after I have taken my pills.

It is a strange experience to live in the same house with a man whom you suddenly don’t hug and kiss and caress anymore. I feel the need to, but I do not allow myself, as I feel that the act will get me pulled in emotionally again when I am trying to create distance and remoteness, as I don’t want to be emotionally involved. Having conversations about the subject of our marriage and the affair is as close as I want to come and that is already very close and I have to shake myself lose afterwards.

I am disconnecting myself and I find that much easier when he is not home, because I can go my own way. I feel seriously hampered when he is home and don’t know much else to do but sit on the sofa and listen to my music or watch TV. I don’t feel the freedom of movement that I have when I am alone. I would like to have discussions with him, but nowadays they are all about one subject and we do get done with that at one point. Eduard says that he feels watched by me from my position on the sofa and that he doesn’t feel free to do what he wants to do, so we seem to have the same problem. He thinks I can read what he writes on the computer from such a long distance and I can’t. I think he feels that I cramp his style.

Oh, I am listening to The Red Hot Chili Peppers now. I am not that familiar with their music, so this is an education. Listen, when you are a 53 year old woman, you have to do your best to stay up on the latest music. For all I know, I am already running behind the times. I do have to be a hip Momma.

If I remember correctly, I was hypomanic this time last year and I think that I am not now. I am pretty sure that I am not, because I don’t feel in the least bit religious and I am not going downtown to burn candles at the chapel. I remember feeling such a terrible need to last year and wearing my funky flamboyant earrings. I do periodically feel the need to buy clothes, but they are just little moods I get into. I bought a gorgeous sun dress, but I need to lose 10 lbs before I can wear it, so that is a good motivator. On Monday my gastric band is going to be filed some more at 8:45 AM and I am more than ready for it, because it has been since October since it has last been.

Speaking as a Borderliner, it seems to me that there ought to be a lot of literature out there about it, but I have been reluctant to find any books discussing the subject. I am so afraid that I am going to run into all sorts of horror stories of how bad it is to live with and how awful the symptoms are and what the suicide rate is. I think I must be better informed, but I have to find a safe way to do it.

At any rate, I must know when it is the borderline syndrome that is doing the speaking for me or if it is the real me that is doing it. There may be a very narrow boundary and it may be very hard to tell the difference. I assume right now that I am rational and that I am not deluding myself, but will I wake up one morning knowing that it was all a delusion I lived under and that I now see the real truth? I am still making sense, aren’t I? When you have an opponent who tells you that you have control issues you do start to doubt yourself.

Okay, I am going to do a little housework around here. I must keep up the apartment a little bit. It is quite dark outside and I have to have all the lights on inside. There is a big storm hanging over the town and there was thunder and lightning a while ago.

Ciao…

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Bowl with Junk and Graffiti.

Bowl with Junk:

Graffiti:

I am not sitting here in my regal red bathrobe, but in my clothes, as that is what I was wearing when I fell asleep on the sofa last night. I hadn’t planned to fall asleep there, it sort of overtook me by surprise and before I knew it, I was gone from this world completely.

I had very intricate dreams about a very evil child who was not me, nor was she my daughter and I don’t know who she was instead, but she was a sheer devil. She could put on her wily charms at the drop of a hat and she was a very calculating little b*tch. It is almost scary that I am capable of dreaming these kinds of things and I wonder what Jung would make of it.

It is a good thing to wake up to reality when you dream like that and realize that you real world doesn’t look like your dream world. I check all the different parts of it for evilness and find out that, no, there is none such in my life. I did have a very scheming and conniving grandmother, but she died and I don’t think it was her in the dream.

I have had two cups of regular coffee and now I am drinking decaf to see what will happen. Maybe I will get sleepier sometime during the wee hours and feel the need to go back to sleep again. It’s an experiment. Of course, it is possible that when I do start to feel sleepy, I’ll switch to regular coffee again, because I am having too much fun staying up. Decisions, decisions…

One thing is for sure, I tried not to turn on the computer right away, but that was as impossible as not breathing, so that experiment failed. I wanted to sit and just enjoy my cup of coffee and my cigarette, but then I thought, “Who am I fooling, turn that darn thing on already!” So I did and I felt much better. Some habits are best not broken, they just feel good.

Yesterday morning the dog and I went for a longer walk. I forgot my gloves and came home with quite cold hands. I could have frozen ice cubes with them. The dog enjoyed his morning constitution and we ran into one other dog who took one look at Jesker and decided to go the other way. It is funny to me that Jesker can be intimidating, because he is such a kindly looking dog, but I guess not always when you are another dog.

I always look at Jesker from the rear when we go for a walk and I think he is quite comical looking, as his rear legs are kind of bow shaped, as most dog’s are, and it makes him look kind of like a little tough cowboy. He ought to wear a Stetson and have a cigarette dangling from his lips. I am sure he thinks he is really tough looking the way he swaggers down the street, but he doesn’t fool me one bit, although I am sure he is a hit with the ladies.

I am always surprised that he isn’t bothered by the cold, while I am wrapped up in layers of clothing. He never shivers. He must have the ability to stay warm even in the cold and he must have an internal mechanism to keep the heat up. I wish I did, as my extremities are always very cold and you can ask Eduard about that. He has felt my cold hands and feet.

I didn’t feel like going to the grocery store and we didn’t really need that much, so I went to the little Mom and Pop shop around the corner where are the items are packed to the ceiling and where you really can buy just about anything. It is fun shopping there if you know where to look. I couldn’t find the cornflakes until they were pointed out to me some seven feet up on a shelf. They do have a good enough selection of cookies there and those were what I was after. Butter spritz with chocolate and little rolled up cakes with whipped cream and jam. Oh, so fattening!

My daughter and her boyfriend came to dinner last night and that is what the cookies were for. I figured we’d have them afterwards with coffee. but we never did get to the coffee part, because the wine tasted too good.

I made a wild mushroom soup, courtesy of Unox with extra mushrooms added in and a container of creme fraiche. I had also made my famous leek pie and I must say that it turned out very well last night. Sometimes, it is especially good and last night was one of those times.

My daughter keeps regaling her boyfriend with amusing and comical stories about her childhood and tells him about people and events that I have half forgotten, but that jar my memory when she tells them. I am so amazed at what she remembers. Apparently I told her, when she was little, that it was good to have lots of pets, because when war broke out we would always have something to eat. I know this is true, it is something I would have said, remembering the hunger winter of WWII, but hearing her say it, it seems so shocking.

She has lots of stories about her and her brother and the kinds of adventures they got into together and some of these things I know nothing about. I am just hearing about them for the first time. And then she says, “But Mom, we were good kids,” and she is right, they were good kids for the most part and I could trust them not to do anything too stupid.

I am glad that she is remembering her childhood with lots of humor. It seems to be a great source of amusement to her and I am happy for that. I think the fact that she had a brother who was so close to her in age and who was her buddy really helped her. They always had each other in the good times and the bad times. At least they could ridicule their parents together when we were being completely disagreeable.

My daughter talks about her brother a lot. He is most definitely a big part of her life still. I think she misses him a lot. But all her stories of him are happy ones and she talks of him with joy in her voice. She is very happy when she finds a photograph with him in it that she hadn’t seen yet. Especially one in which he looks very handsome. He was such a good looking young man.

I am very happy that my daughter is keeping her brother’s memory alive so well. I don’t get a chance to talk about him that much and when I do, it is always with a certain amount of sadness. It is good to talk about him with a certain amount of joy. To remember the happy times. To remember who he was apart from the person who had cancer and suffered so. I’ll make it a point to ask her to tell me more good stories about him and about them.

Some cats are sleeping on the kitchen counter as if that is the most comfortable place to sleep. I don’t know what they are waiting for. Their dishes are filled with kibbles and there is milk in their other dish. Maybe they’re hoping to get lucky and
get some spare luncheon meat. I have been known to give that to hungry looking cats. I think these cats may have me figured all out.

The dog is eyeballing me from his pillow as if I am wearing something that belongs to him. Sometimes I think that these animals have ulterior motives in so innocently hanging around here. I think they want things. They’re constantly keeping me under surveillance to see if I’ll do something that will be to their advantage. It’s a cat and mouse game.

My life wouldn’t be half as amusing without the animals. They are a constant source of humor to me. Actually, there is a lot to be said for the study of animal behavior, although I am studying them in a domestic setting, which influences the outcomes of the results I get, because we do influence the animals quite a bit.

Eduard says, that the animals have nothing better to do than to study us all day long, so they know us better than we know them and they know exactly how to get us to do the things they want us to do. They are only limited by the language they can use to express their desires.

Toby makes urgent noises by the kitchen door when the kibbles are all gone. Gandhi becomes very affectionate when the milk is all gone. Nouri is kind of dopey and leaves it all up to chance. She just takes advantage of what the other cats do for her. I think when push comes to shove, she’ll let me know that she needs something, but so far it hasn’t been necessary. There is always Toby ahead of her demanding new kibbles in the dish and when he meows, she meows too. She is codependent.

I have taken some pictures with Eduard’s camera, but the deal is, that it is Eduard’s camera and that it is hands off for me and that I can have my own camera if I want to. I haven’t decided if I want to yet, so for now I am dependent on him for interesting shots to make my images with. I suppose I could sit down with the instruction booklet and really get to know Eduard’s camera, but that would imply that I would be planning on using it and I don’t want to seem presumptuous. He really and truly wants his own camera and really and truly thinks I should have my own if I want to seriously take photographs. I don’t know how serious I am yet and if I want to spend the money. I’ll have to think about it for a good long while.

He does take photographs keeping my hobby in mind and there are always lots of shots I can work with. You know how I make a series of four images? I know the first and the third image of the series are the best, yet somehow I am compelled to post all four, just because I make all four. I have thought about only posting images one and three and then doing double images. I don’t know, I have to think about it. Maybe I’ll come up with a solution today.

Tell you what, lets take a vote, should I only post images one and three or should I post all four images of the series? You tell me and please, be brutally honest. I know you can do it. I’ve seen you do it on other blogs. I like to show the whole sequence, because that’s what I make and they are connected, but I can see the charms of only posting one and three, because they are maybe the best.

You tell me!

I have been so busy doing other things, that I have forgotten to polish my nails and now I look like a floozy. I can’t have that and either have to wear nail polish properly or not at all, none of this half off stuff. I have always disliked that about other women’s nail polish when it wasn’t on right anymore and I used to think, “Oh, I would never walk around looking like that!” Well, now I am and in just a few minutes, I am going to wipe it all off.

I realize that I am no fun in the evening. Some time after dinner, I start to yawn and my level of energy declines rapidly. My ability to keep up an acceptable level of conversation fails and I start to give one syllable answers. My daughter suggested a game of Scrabble and I could only decline with some amount of horror, even after she offered me the chance to play in two languages. I am intellectually not up to that after dinner and I could probably only make one syllable words like “What” and “Who” and “Why”. Or words like “Poop” and “Pee”.

I am not a great one for playing games anyway, as it requires a level of concentration that I just don’t have. I get distracted and bored to quickly and I don’t have a killer instinct. I like to play poker if it is a fast game, but Scrabble and Rummy Cup take too long. I also like a fast game of dice, as long as it moves quickly. I’ll have to remember that the next time I am almost falling asleep. If people would just get up early in the morning like I do, we would all have a great social life, but they all sleep late and don’t get going for hours later than I do. I get bored in the morning waiting for the world to wake up.

I’ll be happy when the holidays are over, because I have been eating things other than what I usually eat. I have had a lot of sweets and I haven’t weighed myself for some time and vow I will not until I start eating more normal again. I have an appointment with the Obesitas Nurse Specialist on the 14th of January, after I have my first appointment with the dietitian. Lots of good and sensible advice will be given me, but mostly it will be the moral back up that I need to get rid of the last kilos. And I hope that the gastric band will be filled one more time, because I think there is some room left for improvement. I definitely should be eating smaller portions.

Well, I suppose this epistle has grown long enough for one sitting. It has been most amusing sitting here writing it and I could go on for hours. I won’t, though. A woman does have to know her limits and the limits of her audience.

I wish you all a very good day, with lots of productive and creative hours. Ciao…

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Red Flower Images number 8.

The plant I was talking about named Child on it’s Mother’s Lap, is actually called the Piggy Back Plant. Here is some information on it:

Common names:

Piggyback Plant, Pick-a-Back, Youth-On-Age, Thousand Mothers, Mother of Thousands

Scientific name: Tolmiea Menziesii

Explanation of scientific name:

Tolmiea – Named for Dr. William Fraser Tolmie (1830-1886), a Scottish physician and botanist who worked for the Hudson Bay Company at Fort Vancouver.

Menziesii – Named for Dr. Archibald Menzies (1754-1842), a naval surgeon and botanist who collected plants in western North America.

Many indoor gardeners know the Piggyback Plant as a durable houseplant that can tolerate conditions that would prove fatal to many other plants. It is especially tolerant of low light conditions. What comes as a surprise to many people is that Piggybacks are fully hardy in our area, and are reliable perennials that will do well in a shady location.

Native to western North America from northern California into Alaska, the Piggyback’s natural habitat is an area with cool, moist soil that is protected from bright sunlight. They commonly grow under the canopy of tall trees. While each plant is under a foot in height, it can slowly spread forming a large colony. When cultivated indoors Piggybacks make dense, full potted plants and nice hanging baskets. When grown outdoors they make a great groundcover.

So, another mystery solved. I looked the plant up in my Sunset Western Garden Book and while looking through it I suddenly remembered the name Piggy Back. That Sunset Western Garden Book used to be my bible when I gardened in California. I learned everything about gardening from it. Most places in California have tough soil, so you really need all the help you can get when it comes to soil conditions and how to improve them and what to plant where. Some things I grew easily and some things just wouldn’t take at all; it was a real trial and error process. It wasn’t like it is in the Netherlands, where you just stick something in the soil and watch it grow. In California you really had to cultivate things and water them every day.

Well, I weigh 87 kilos again, so that is good. I was a little bit hesitant about getting on the scales fearing that it would be a lot worse, but this isn’t bad at all. I know, people have said that I shouldn’t weigh myself every day, because it may be disheartening to do so, but I am compelled to and I am always afraid that if I don’t weigh myself, things will get away from me and I will gain weight without realizing it. So the scales are there in the bathroom and I have a piddle and then I am compelled to weigh myself early in the morning; I can’t help it.

Eduard and I are going to paint the dresser that the TV sits on black on Wednesday. He is going to work for just an hour or two in the morning and then he is coming home to help me paint. I asked him to, because I didn’t like to face the whole thing by myself. It really needs two people to do it, as it is quite a large piece of furniture.

All the drawers need to be emptied and it will be a chance to sort out the stuff that is in them and throw some things away as well. Some of those things belong to Eduard, so he needs to be here and tell me what can go. It’s going to be so much nicer to paint with two people. Just think, it will mean half the work and half the frustration. Unless we get into painting arguments! I’ll make sure and take an Oxazepam before we start.

Yesterday was a totally dull day here at the ranch. Nothing of importance happened. I didn’t really need to clean the apartment as I had done that really well on Saturday and I had only one load of laundry to do. Actually, I was kind of bored and this caused me to feel hungry and tired. I slept all morning on the sofa with the dog beside me and we didn’t get up until 11 am. I walked him then and did the dishes from Sunday. Eduard came home while I was doing them, because he had to work late that evening. I was generally pooped and kept feeling like hanging out on the sofa watching the cats sleep on the new chair. I wasn’t even interested in reading all the advertising booklets that came in the mail in the afternoon. I just didn’t care.

I am sure today will be a whole other day, as it is now in the wee hours of the night and I have already had lots of sleep. I am bright eyed and bushy tailed, as the saying goes. I will never have a normal sleep schedule at this rate, although I did sleep in my bed this time and not on the sofa, even though I find that the most comfortable place to sleep.

Yesterday I ate an orange and I didn’t chew it well enough, causing a blockage in my gastric band with all the consequences that come with it. After much suffering I was able to upchuck it and that was a great relief. I must not eat oranges anymore, because they are too hard to chew into small pieces. Better to stick to the yogurt and the Cup a Soup. And the bread with very lean chicken. I am sort of relieved that we have decided to eat chicken and fish, I was worried about us getting enough proteins, especially Eduard, and I must say that chicken is a meat that works well in a number of dishes. My conscious is not bothering me too much about the chickens, although I suppose it ought to. I am undecided about it. I don’t feel as badly about it as the pigs. I am truly horrified about them.

My brother in law doesn’t eat fish
or chicken, so he didn’t eat the salmon that I served on Sunday. He was good natured about it and it was his loss. I told him that Eduard and I only eat chicken and fish, whereas he only eats red meats such as sausages and steaks and meatballs. He says that he likes Bolognese sauce, so I suppose I will make it for him with the meat substitute and just not tell him that that is what it is. The next time they come.

My sister very often serves my nephew meat substitute , although he is a real meat eater, and then he claims that he absolutely loves it without knowing that it is. My niece is a complete vegetarian and refuses to eat anything that has meat in it. She has been for some years now and she is only fourteen. She is very strong minded.

When I was a child growing up, we didn’t make choices about food. We didn’t even think about it or know that we had a choice. We just ate everything that our mother fixed for us. We all had our favorite food, but we ate everything. It would have been impossible to refuse to eat anything that was put on the table. Of course, my parents lived through the war and the terrible hunger winter of 44-45 and they had a holy reference for food, any food. They had gone hungry, after all. I remember being about 4 or 5 years old and sitting behind a plate of Brussels sprouts and not being allowed to leave the table until I ate everyone of them. I now love Brussels sprouts, although maybe that was a cruel thing to do, I don’t know. I never did that to my kids and they ended up liking lots of food.

I have eaten a lot of different kinds of foods, but I have never eaten snails, or escargot as they are called. Somehow that just doesn’t seem appetizing to me. Nor have I ever eaten frog’s legs. I stay away from slimy things. I have never been challenged to eat an unusual food, such as guinea pig or snake or raw sea lion.. Thank goodness. Chances are that will never happen to me here in the Netherlands. We do eat raw herring and think nothing of that.

Today I am seeing my SPN and for the life of me, I can’t really remember what we talked about last week or what decision we came to about that. I was manic then and I have bad recall. I do know that she asked me to write down my experience of my shopping trip to Ikea with Eduard on Tuesday and I have done that. Of course, on Tuesday afternoon I had taken 25 mg of Oxazepam, and I was as tame as a lamb, as they say here. Nothing spectacular happened that afternoon. But I can’t remember the other things we talked about and I know there were other things. I am experiencing blankness. It is a black void mostly. I hope she will help me remember and that it will dawn on me.

She is turning out to be such a good counselor and such a smart and well informed person. She has managed to get my complete trust. She knows how to have a meaningful conversation with me and how to answer my questions. I can be totally honest with her and I don’t have to hide anything. For as young as she is, she has a lot of wisdom already, more than I do, which is as it should be.

I am thoroughly enjoying my cups of coffee and my cigarettes, Everything tastes very nice right now and I feel rather splendid. For as early as it is, I am quite wide awake and I could do all sorts of things now. It’s too bad that I can’t make any noise for fear of waking up Eduard. I would be cleaning out those dresser drawers now if I could. I bet there is a lot of stuff I could throw away myself without having to ask Eduard about it.

Eduard is a real hoarder, whereas I am a real tosser out. I always think, the less baggage, the better. Eduard has been known to toss out things that belonged to me that shouldn’t have been tossed out. I have been quite peeved about that. Such as a bag with totally nice shoes. Gggrrr…

We have a lot of tapes with music on them that we never play anymore. We want to replace the ones that we really like with CD’s. I am all for tossing out the tapes, because we haven’t listened to them in years. They are slowly disintegrating in one of the drawers. I also have lot’s of handy work that I have started and then abandoned, because I became bored with it. I suppose I should toss that out also or give it to the recycle store. Then there are all the little kid’s games that my niece and nephew used to play with. They are too old for them now. They can go.

There’s nothing better than having a good old toss out. It clears up the clutter in the apartment and it clears up your mind. Less mental baggage, less to keep track off. When we went to clean up my parent’s house, you wouldn’t have known that three girls used to live there. All evidence of us was gone, except for the photographs. It made cleaning up the house a very easy job and void of a lot of sentiment. It was all pretty straight forward and concerned furniture and clothes.

Part of me wants the night to last forever and to sit here and keep writing, but I know you’ll get bored after so many paragraphs, so I will stop dawdling and make an end to this epistle. I will go and read other blogs and drink lots of coffee and smoke many cigarettes while I wait for morning to come.

Have yourself a terrific day, or a wonderful night, whichever comes first. While you read this, think of me sitting here, thinking of you. Ciao…

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