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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Painted Hummingbird Images number 2.

Babaloo from Fairymix.com gave me the Best Blogging Buddies Award that you can see in my sidebar and I give this award directly to Frances of a Carpet Full of Holes and Beverley of Heavenly Body. I am sure they will appreciate it as much as I do. So, girls come and pick up your award from my sidebar, you’ve both been with me almost from the very beginning and that is many posts ago. 345 As a matter of fact. We’ll see which I reach first, my one year anniversary or post number 500. Thanks, Babaloo!

Santa came to our house early yesterday. I think it was Santa, he had a grayish beard and although he wore ordinary clothes, he did come bearing a gift for me. I think he must not have worn his special suit with the pillow stuck under it, because it wasn’t actually Christmas yet. He probably didn’t want to confuse the neighbors. So that’s why he left his sleigh at home and came on his bicycle instead.

He brought me a very nice warm pair of slippers and I was very grateful to Santa and gave him a big hug and a kiss, although I don’t know if you’re supposed to do that with Santa. It didn’t make him blush or anything, so he must be used to it. I am wearing my slippers right now and as a consequence, I am warm all over and not only my feet are toasty warm. That Santa sure is a hell of a nice guy, reacting to my plea in my last post so promptly. I should wish for more things that way!

Eduard and I had an appointment with my SPN yesterday morning and it was quite interesting. Eduard wanted to be there to discuss why I had been so grumpy and short tempered with him in the afternoons and we discussed that. We came to the conclusion that some of that was a residue of the dysphoric mania that I had had, but that the rest of it was due to stress. When I was hypo manic, I took on a lot of jobs and when I stopped being hypo manic, I still had to finish all the jobs I had taken upon myself to do. When I am not hypo manic, I am very sensitive to stress and the least little thing causes it. This has to do with circumstances during my childhood, that much is clear. Anyway, I am not very stress resistant when I am not hypo manic and quickly feel overwhelmed. I always feel like I am going to have a nervous breakdown when things get too complicated for me and that happens quickly.

In my case, when I feel stress, I become uptight and bitchy and take it out on Eduard. That’s what Eduard sees and feels, although he is not the cause of it. He just happens to be in the way of it. I can also become very silent and withdrawn and just suffer within, he notices that too. Of course, it is only natural that he takes this behavior personally and it is a good thing that we talked about it and had it explained properly. It does mean, that I have to take on less responsibility when I am not hypo manic. I can’t juggle things and keep them all up in the air.

I have to learn to deal with my tendency to experience many situations as stressful and threatening. Knowledge about what happens is very important. Having Eduard understand what happens is very important too. We can avoid situations which cause a lot of the stress. Like not going to Ikea when I don’t need to go along and Eduard is quite capable of going on his own. And walking away from things that I can’t do a thing about and in which I am just a helpless observer and add nothing but stress. And not committing myself to things when I don’t know what sort of a mood I am going to be in in the very near future and to cancel things if the mood isn’t right.

Well, anyway, you get the drift. Slowly but surely I am learning to live with myself. I just hope all these lessons I learn stick in my memory and that I don’t have to keep reinventing the wheel.

Yesterday I started reading a diary that I had kept in 2002 which I had found in a drawer when I cleaned out the dresser before we painted it. It was very interesting and full of information that I had completely forgotten. It was like reading a stranger’s diary. There were names and events in there that I could really not recall and emotions that I described that surprised me. Concepts and ways of thinking that I do not have now. Problems I dealt with that are no longer problems now. Fascinating. I did fall asleep with it on the sofa and when I woke up, it was time to go to bed and I took it with me to read there. I got about halfway through it and I can’t wait to read the rest of it. You see how you can be your own mystery.

It was pretty darn cold out yesterday and I only took the dog out for very short walks. There was a cold wind blowing and it was freezing. Whenever it is cold, I think about people who don’t have a place to live and who are out on the streets, even in this country where it shouldn’t happen. I shudder at the thought off how hard it must be to stay warm and how hard it must be to give up a warmer place once you have found it. It is no wonder that so many homeless people hang out at shopping malls and bus shelters. Anywhere out of the cold wind must be nice.

I also think about WWII and the people in the concentration camps who had no food and no heat and hardly any clothes to wear and how in the world did some of them survive that and how God awful that must have been. The cold reminds me of a lot of negative things and I am happy that I have warm clothes to wear and a warm apartment to go to. I just wonder about the human capacity for suffering and surviving somehow.

Okay, I will not get too morbid. I am a modern woman living in a modern western country and I will never forget that. Look at what a good life I have and how well I am taken care off. And I am not only talking about my basic needs, there are many fringe benefits too, such as excellent medical care and plentiful food and clothing and cultural benefits. We don’t know how good we have it.

My brother in law, the one who is married to my oldest sister, is doing very poorly. Fifteen years ago he got a donor heart and it is now failing and nothing can be done about it. He is in the hospital now and they are getting him as stable as they possibly can and then he wil
l be sent home, where there will be a special hospital bed for him downstairs and where he will most likely die. My sister is taking it hard. I worry about her. She will have a hard time on her own, living by herself in that big house. She has a grown up daughter close by and a son in law and a granddaughter, but still, nothing replaces your husband, of course. My brother in law is a tough one and it is amazing that he has lasted this long with a donor heart and he has had complications in the past, but this is serious and I think his time has come. We will be going to a funeral soon.

I feel sorry for my sister. She has never lived on her own and I know she will do badly. As it is now, she hardly sleeps, because she is afraid to be home alone. I don’t know what the solution is and I live too far away from her to help her. It is a three hour trip by car to get there and four and a half hours by train. My daughter is going to be here for the holidays, so I am not going to be able to stay with my sister any time soon, but I will when it is required of me. When she is alone and she needs me. She is my sister, after all.

I weigh 87 kilos again this morning, so not much is happening there. I definitely need the gastric band to be tightened some more, because apparently I am eating enough food not to make any difference in my weight. I don’t eat a lot in one sitting, but I eat small portions of food throughout the day. Maybe I could eat a little less, but then I do feel hungry when I eat. Maybe it’s the cold weather making me hungry for carbohydrates. I eat those little buns, and they fill me up quite nicely. It’s just enough food. I don’t know what I can cut out, maybe I can make the portions of yogurt smaller. I feel like there is still too much room left to eat too much.

Well, that’s all I’ve got for today. Sitting here in my toasty warm slippers, I salute you. Ciao…

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Picasso Images number 6.

So, I actually managed to sleep for quite a long spell. I stayed awake all day yesterday until 5:30 pm, which is no small feat as I had been up since midnight. Finally, I started to cave in and went to bed after taking all of my medicines and was out cold after a very short time. I slept until 2 am this morning, which I think is not half bad.

Now all I have to do is stay awake longer tonight and sleep longer the next morning and maybe slowly I will get back to a more normal schedule. Still I had my eight hours of sleep and that’s not half bad, I just didn’t have them at the right time yet.

I did this sleeping with the aid of an oxazepam along with my sleeping pills, which I am sure my psychiatrist will not be happy about, but which I am going to do until I get back to a more normal schedule.

I weighed myself this morning and I was 87 kilos, which is okay. I have bought bread rolls which are only half the size of regular bread rolls and make for a good little sandwich with thin sliced chicken fillet on it. I also bought them the same size in raisin buns and they make for a good little treat. They are just big enough for me to eat so it doesn’t bother my gastric band.

I am eating those and nonfat yogurt and Cup a Soups. Occasionally, I will eat some of Eduard’s dinner, but more often than not, I end up above the toilet when I do, so I guess I shouldn’t bother and do that anymore. My eyes are bigger than my stomach and I eat too fast.

Yesterday I had Eduard cut of a big branch of the now bare Golden Rain. I put it in the vase where I also had the branches with the little lights on them and then went to the store and bought some Christmas decorations and decorated all the branches to give the living room a festive look after all. It turned out rather well. I have beads and balls and a single gauzy butterfly sitting at the top and some red rocking horses as well for a touch of color.

I had given away my Christmas decorations to my sister some years ago, thinking I was never going to decorate a tree again, because I found myself to be always depressed at Christmas time, but this year is different and I may start up a whole new tradition of decorating bare, lighted up branches.

The cats have been curious, but so far they have left the beads and balls untouched, so I hope they keep ignoring them. They could reach them via one of their scratching poles, but none of them has tried it yet. I have visions of the whole thing toppling over, but so far, so good. There isn’t another place I can put it and maybe they instinctively know how much these decorated branches mean to me. That’s what I’ll assume then.

I think I have been rating myself with sixes for something like nine days now and let me tell you something, it is very boring. I am turning into such a dull person. The living room is all done and I don’t have anything exciting to do right now and I think I am just such a dull person for Eduard to come home to, although maybe he likes that, I don’t know. It is possible that he got a bit worn out when I was scoring eights and nines. To him it may seem like peace and quiet, but to me it just seems like a dull roar with nothing happening. Did I wish for this? Well, occasionally maybe, but not non stop like this.

I would like a bit of my hypo mania back, just enough to make my life a bit more exciting than it is now. I do have a good time when I am home by myself in the mornings, but when Eduard comes home in the afternoons, I secretly want something to happen and when it doesn’t, I am disappointed. We both sit there like two old fogies and do absolutely nothing and it is so boring! Of course, when Eduard asks me what I want to do instead, I can’t come up with anything sensible at all, but I am sure that I could if I were hypo manic.

Of course, I am forgetting what our last couple of weeks have been like, so full of activity and I counted that we have made at least eleven changes to the living room. Actually, the stress of it was getting to me in the end and I was getting grumpy because of it, but still…I do want something to happen.

I got an email from my daughter saying that, because of the bad weather in the States, their flight has been delayed until Wednesday, so they will not get here until Friday evening or Saturday morning. They are flying through Toronto, that’s why. This will be good news to my sister, who is swamped with work and other activities right now and she was hoping that they wouldn’t show up too soon. I don’t mind too much, I know she is coming and a few more days will not make a difference. I mind it for her, because it means that she will have less time to spend here.

I definitely need a pair of slippers. I am sitting here with my socks on getting cold feet anyway. Maybe Santa can bring me some, so if Santa reads this weblog…please? I am size 41!

Yesterday was such a darn cold day. The wind was blowing too, making it extra cold. It was not a day to be out for your pleasure and the dog and I didn’t go for a long walk. We just took mini walks. As soon as he had done his business, we headed home again.

I went grocery shopping in the morning and wore a triple layer of clothes under my coat and my scarf and gloves. I need bigger bags on my bike, because I am limited in how much I can buy in one trip by the size of them. I can’t ride my bike holding a bag in my hand, because I can’t steer with one hand. I tried that and I am an accident waiting to happen. The heavier the bag, the worse it gets. I have bike intimidation. I get intimidated by my bike and my ability to do things with it if I also have to do other things. It’s from living in the States for many years and doing groceries by car and losing my bicycle handiness abilities. You see mothers with one child on the back and one child in a seat on the front and two bags of shopping on the handlebars, I could never do that. We would all die in a terrible accident.

Well, anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. The other blogs are calling me. The lure of all the other words and the art work.

Have yourself a great day, don’t fall off your bike, ciao…

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Old Pisa Door Mandalas 1, 2 and 3

With the generous help of Rima, I was able to transform my blog into something more personal. I picked the Minima template from Blogger and then added a picture of a mandala to the header. Rima explained to me how to do this. So you see how even a person as inexperienced as I can do such a thing. Once you’ve done it, you think, “Well, that wasn’t so difficult! I should have done that months ago!” Of course, months ago I didn’t know Rima. She is always the first one to come up with good suggestions and the person to help you out with something that you are trying to do. So, three cheers for Rima.

I weighed myself this morning and I weigh 92.4 kilos, in spite of the fact that I had a peanut butter sandwich, which made me feel very full and uncomfortable, but was worth every bite. Sometimes you just have to have something as finger licking good as that, when you are just drooling at the idea of it. And I know that I am not allergic to peanuts, but I do have a very weepy and itchy ear and I then have to assume that this is still the effect of the corn in the little potato salads that I eat every day. I refuse to take out the corn, because it tastes so good and there is so little of it and I don’t have the self discipline. I am very self indulgent. As a matter of fact, I wish I had one of those little potato salads now and I would eat it right away.

I got a new prescription for the Oxazepam from my psychiatrist and he has no problem with me using it for now at all, which I think is very generous of him and which also shows that he trusts me when it comes to my medications. He does know that I ask for something only when I need it, be it something extra like this or an increase in a dosage of something. He never gives me a hard time about it and it always works out well.

This in contrast to my friend Lucien who often gets nil on her requests, but there must be a good reason for that and I don’t know what that is, of course, and I have to be careful what I say about my medications to her lest she starts comparing too much. Every time she gets turned down for something, I only hear her side of the story and although I have a lot of sympathy for her, I don’t know all the reasons behind it, of course, and I do have to be careful how I react to it. I know her husband doesn’t believe in medication to cure what ails her and that is a real shame, because it means that she does not have his support in this area, when medications are so important in fighting a chemical imbalance and can do so much good. He thinks it is all junk and the less she takes, the better. It seems to me that he needs to be educated a little bit better. It’s like saying to a diabetic that he ought not to take insulin. Or to a migraine sufferer that he should not take pain pills.

The Topamax, which is the medication I take as a mood stabilizer, was originally developed as an anti epileptic and for people who suffered from extreme migraines. It works in the temporal lobes on the sides of your head. It was discovered that this medication also worked as a mood stabilizer and I can tell you that for me it has worked beautifully. When I started taking it in February, it got me out of my depression very nicely and since I have been taking it, I have felt better than I had in many years. It is sort of a miracle drug for me. I take it along with two kinds of anti depressives and an anti psychotic medication. All these drugs together make me feel ‘normal’ most of the time. Nobody can tell that I take this much medication, as I function normally just like anybody else and I am not in the least impaired, except for some of my short term memory.

I seem to suffer from S.A.D. in other words, I get depressed in the winter time, about half of the year as a matter of fact. When the light changes toward the fall, I change too, although there were years when my depressions never really lifted and I stayed chronically depressed throughout the year. Not since I am on the Topamax however. It lifted me out of it completely. Now I notice a sort of gloominess settling over me. I am not depressed, but I feel less motivated and excited to do things and I want to hibernate. I also noticed that I was getting a bit short tempered, and I don’t want to be, as it is projecting my own feelings onto other people and that is not fair to them. I have to always keep track of my moods, so things don’t suddenly take me by surprise when they have been brewing for days and weeks already. Sometimes you don’t notice the subtle changes, but they all start to add up to something bigger and before you know it, you have a problem on your hands.

Luckily, I live with a very even tempered man, he is very predictable and basically always in the same mood, which is mostly cheerful. You always know ahead of time what Eduard will be like when he gets up in the morning and what he will be like when he comes home from work. There is no moping and moodiness. He is emotionally very healthy, while at the same time having all of his little quirks that make him so endearing to me. His reactions to my shifts in moods are always very rational and we discuss them in a very rational manner. We don’t let them turn into emotional dramas. We take them as facts of life and deal with them accordingly. We discuss how we will handle them and what the best course of action will be. Firstly we always look at what can be done with the medication, then we look at how we can arrange our lives to accommodate the mood. It means that Eduard lowers his expectations of me temporarily and gives me a little bit of space to be less functioning in. He takes over some of the things that I find harder to do and doesn’t plan any emotionally strenuous activities. Most importantly, he lets me be me, imperfect as that is.

We had to learn all of these things, of course. We did a lot of reading and thinking about it and we talked a lot about how we understood the problem to be. There were a couple of books that really helped us, the most important one being Against Depression by Peter D. Kramer. That was a very helpful and insightful book into how a depression works in your mind and what it does and doesn’t do. I think it helps to be intelligent and to be willing to learn as much as you can about the affliction. Sticking your head in the sand never helps, especially not for the people who are the fellow sufferers. Ignorance is a very dangerous thing. It perpetuates myths.

Well, sometimes I have to discuss these things for the obvious reason that I need to reach out and touch as many people as I can, because I know there are many people out there who one way or the other come in touch with depression, either because they have it themselves, or because a loved one has it or a friend of the family. I recommend reading the right books as a source of information and going to support groups, although they can be a bit off putting with everyo
ne sitting around looking very gloomy if there is not the proper person running the group. Educating yourself is the best thing you can do and being very proactive and assertive about getting the best care and the best medications. Don’t be a passive patient.

Yesterday was such a lazy day. All morning I sat behind the computer. When Eduard left in the morning, I was sitting behind the computer and when he came home at noon time, I was still sitting there. He just grinned at me for being so addicted. I got up quickly and cleaned up the kitchen and then made cigarettes, but the little machine wouldn’t work right and Eduard had to go out and get a new one at the tobacco store. Then my friend Lucien called and we had a conversation about moods and frustrating husbands and uncooperative psychiatrists and I tried to be very understanding and I feel her frustration. I would hate to be in her position and feel that my back was against the wall in what I was trying to attain.

The afternoon went by very pleasantly with Eduard and me taking turns behind the computer and me saying that maybe we need to get wireless and an extra lap top. We would never be able to get a divorce, because we would fight about the computer. It belongs to us equally, although I act very proprietary towards it. I always act like it belongs more to me than to him. Eduard has his own computer at work, but of course he doesn’t get to do all sorts of fun things on it.

After dinner, when Eduard had gone to work again, I fell asleep on the sofa and slept for two hours and when I woke up, I turned the computer on again, even though I was so sleepy and I could hardly keep my eyes open. I checked for emails and comments and there were some, but I was actually not in any shape to react to them coherently. So, I did the smart thing and took my medications and went to bed. I took Melba toast and a tall glass of cold milk with me and had a little party while I was almost falling asleep. I am reading Mythology for Dummies and it really is for dummies, which includes me when I go to bed at night and my brain has just about stopped functioning. For someone who is a voracious reader, I am certainly not reading a lot right now. The computer takes up so much of my time and when I do read during the day, I fall asleep over my book. I have to start the Unicorn by Iris Murdoch and see if it will really grab my attention like her books usually do. I can’t become an illiterate at this stage of my life.

When I am in the GP’s office, I read the women’s magazines that he has there and I think they are so bad, because they make it out as if everything in life is just all wonderful and cozy and compartmentalized into happy little blocks of life in which everybody lives happily ever after if they just decorate their table right and wear the right kind of summery clothing. They are full of feel good stories and uplifting articles and good looking families. Mostly blond and blue eyed. They very rarely discuss anything gritty or disagreeable and if they do, it is in a very saccharine way, with always a happy ending for all.

Okay, That’s enough of my rambling now. I must make some more coffee and have another cup of Senseo. There are no animals around yet, everybody is still asleep. Sometimes I hear Eduard snore and make funny noises in his sleep. He must be dreaming.

Have a wonderful day, even when you are B.A.D. or S.A.D. Ciao…

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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.

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Ungodly Hour.

I woke up at the ungodly hour of 2:30 am. I thought, “What in the world am I doing up so early now already?” I checked with myself to see if I was still sleepy, but no, I wasn’t, so I headed for the kitchen to make coffee and I thought how it was good that there was nobody around to force me to go back to bed, because we surely would have had a fight on our hands. I was thinking of how my father at my age would get up in the middle of the night too, and how my mother would make him go back to bed and he would go very unwillingly, only to sneak back down again when she had gone back to sleep. I have to do no such sneaking around, as Eduard is sound asleep and he wouldn’t force me to go back to bed anyway.

I am so glad that we have a computer and a fast Internet connection. Before that, I used to sit and watch MTV with the headphones on. This kept me up to date and well informed on the latest music, which I am now not any longer, but they were lonely hours spent until morning came. I now amuse myself so much better. There are so many blogs to read and I can really take my time doing that. And then there is all that delicious coffee to drink and that wonderful Senseo, and tobacco smoke to inhale! It can’t get much better than that! All that’s missing is a nice piece of fresh fruit pie with freshly whipped cream. Yes, I do know all of my downfalls.

When I was young, I didn’t eat any sweets. I never ate a candy or a cookie. I don’t know why, but I just didn’t care for them. As I got older, my cravings changed and I started to like chocolate chip cookies very much and oatmeal cookies and peanut butter crunch cookies. Of course, all of these were homemade and especially delicious. In the States, people do a lot of baking, much more than they do in the Netherlands. I also developed a real taste for homemade apple pie and pumpkin pie with whipped cream if possible.

The strange thing is, that eating these things didn’t make me fat and when I came back to the Netherlands, I weighed 65 kilos and I wore a size 10. I started to get fat when I started to take medication for my bipolar II disorder. The anti depressives and the lithium made me gain a lot of weight and they also made me feel hungry all the time. Because the right combination of medication wasn’t found at first, I was also depressed quite often and when I am depressed I get a craving for carbohydrates and fatty foods, so in no time at all I had gained a tremendous amount of weight, without me really realizing it. I also started to crave sweets very much, but didn’t realize until much later that this was because I had developed diabetes and my body was craving the sugar. This went on for a couple of years, so, I became a blimp. One morning I woke up and realized that I was a very fat person.

I thought, “Oh well, I guess this is the price you pay for mental health. You get a sane mind, but a fat body,” and I tried to learn to live with it. Sometimes I dieted and I lost a few kilos, but mostly I just stayed fat and the people around me were kind enough not to comment on that really. They had seen me blow up like a blimp, but didn’t think they could say anything about it for fear of hurting my delicate feelings. It seemed that I had accepted my condition and that I was okay with it, because they saw me eating like it wasn’t bothering me. I went to my GP a few times to ask him about a gastric band, but he said every time that it wouldn’t be right for me and to put it out of my mind. That I wasn’t the right candidate for it. So, I believed him.

Then I noticed my very fat neighbor, a couple of houses down, getting slimmer and slimmer whenever I saw her walking her dog. At a certain point, it was so obvious that I could no longer ignore it and I asked her about it. She told me that she had gotten a gastric band and that she had lost a lot of weight as a result of that and that she was still losing weight. I thought, “Darn it, that is what I want and why can’t I have that?” So, with renewed courage, I went to my GP and asked him quite bluntly why he thought that I wasn’t a candidate for a gastric band and he said, with some amount of hesitation in his voice, that he thought I wouldn’t make it through the psychological testing. Well, this really made me mad, and I said, “Of course I will, why shouldn’t I? Let them test me, I will do as well as anyone!”

Well, the rest is history, as they say. I made it through the psychological testing with flying colors and got my gastric band. My GP had been putting me off all along and he had been wrong in discouraging me and not giving me a referral letter to the surgeon. He had made assumptions which had been proved wrong. He was under the impression that I was more mentally unstable than I really was, without really checking to see if his impression of me was right. That is how much people assume about psychiatric patients. The assumption is made that, once you have hit rock bottom, you will never bounce back and you always carry the burden of your poor mental health with you.

People don’t realize, even GP’s don’t, that in between bouts of depression, or even during low depressions, you are a normal person with normal thoughts just like anybody else. They don’t realize that you are still a genuine whole person inside. That you are capable of following instructions and taking on responsibility. Now, it is true, that when you are severely depressed you are not, but obviously I was not severely depressed when I asked for the gastric band and he should have realized that. Actually, by the time I had my operation in October, I was just starting to move into a depression again, but I didn’t let anybody know this and it didn’t hamper my surgery or the recovery time or my subsequent weight loss. I thought, just keep smiling, the less they know, the better. So I smiled and faked it. I knew I would be alright, I had taken on so many things in my life while being depressed.

So here I am, 33 kilos later, hoping to shed those last 12 kilos. Not depressed any longer thanks to the good medication Topamax, which has turned out to be a miracle medication for me. The only medication that I take that does not make me gain weight. Yes, miracles do happen in the form of pharmaceutical products.

My friend Lucien was here yesterday and she has gained a lot of weight due to her medications. She looks like a little round ball, because she is short. She takes lithium, which I thankfully have stopped taking, and it has made her gain a lot of weight, as do the other medications. Still, she is like me, she so much cares for her mental health that she won’t quit the lithium to get her figure back. She is in a low mood since she has quit her anti depressives and she doesn’t seem to be able to get her bounce back. She takes a mood stabiliser and we both figured out that the dosage of it probably needs to be increased. She is seeing a therapist other than her psychiatrist now and this therapist says that it is all between her ears. So, in other words, her depressed feelings are all in her own head and if she got her act together, she would be happier. This really pisses me off, as it is this kind of nonsense that ordinary people go around saying and I don’t expect it from a professional. I told her to contact her psychiatrist and to discuss the dosage of the medication with him. Really!

There are so many misconceptions about mental health and they all need to be helped out of this world by discussing them openly. Depression isn’t something that you can overcome by being extra tough or extra cheerful. You don’t get over it by saying that it is all in your head and if only you tried harder it would all be okay. It isn’t a weakness of character or a lack of effort or the unwillingness of trying. Depressed people try very hard. They try their very best. They put in all their effort. They have strong characters. You couldn’t walk and talk an
d be depressed at the same time otherwise. Depression cripples you as surely as any other severe disease does. It takes a lot of effort to even keep functioning to some extent when you have a severe depression.

Well, don’t let me get on my high horse. Irene, the spokeswoman for the mentally oppressed! I see injustice in the world and I want to wipe it out. Maybe I should find a banner for a Mental Health Organization and put it on my blog. Can you imagine having mental health problems in a third world country and what would happen to you then? There is no help for you there. Even in Russia and other eastern European countries things are quite archaic. Let’s be happy that we all live in modern, western societies.

I have to tell you about my toe. The final scab came off yesterday and now my toe looks very nice and normal. That took a while, didn’t it? And I can wear whatever shoe I want. So, hurray.

Well, that’s it for me for today. I have run out of words again. Oh yes, I have the Paint Shop book now and I am working my way through it. I do every exercise in the book until I completely understand it. Contrary to popular believe, I am not that bright and things do take a while to sink in. But once I know them, I won’t forget. But I do see that, when I get Paint Shop Pro 8 myself for good, I will have to order the book as a reference guide to go with it. It may be handy to have laying around.

Okay, folks, ciao…

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