Slow time...

Although I really slept well last night, I took a four hour nap on the sofa this afternoon, which seems pretty incredible to me too. I can't believe I slept for such a long time and needed a cup of coffee immediately when I woke up. 

It did me a world of good and I felt very satisfied and sated afterwards and in a good mood. I must have really needed that sleep, which goes to show you that I tire easily from doing the most ordinary chores and that I don't always get enough sleep at night and need to catch up on that every once in a while. 

The first thing I did this morning was go to the patio and clean up Tyke's poop that had been covered up by the snow that now had melted and revealed everything. It was quite a unpleasant job and I had been putting it of. 

After washing my hands thoroughly under hot water, I took the laundry off the drying rack and folded it and put it away and took the next load out of the washing machine and hung it up to dry. 

This is one of the jobs I like to do and I think it has to do with my sense of order. I like hanging up things neatly and putting them away, knowing that each thing has its place. When I get frustrated, I know it is because my closet is not in order and I need to clean it up.

Next, I got the mail out of the mailbox and was rewarded with my new health insurance policy which I had been waiting for. I had taken care of changes on my policy on line, but because there had been problems with the website, I didn't know if the changes had gone through properly and I was expecting all sorts of problems. I had called the help desk of the insurance company, but their computers were giving them problems and I only got a vague promise that it would be taken care of. 

It's nice when something does work out right. This had been bothering me very much and was one of the reasons why I had been so nervous, because I anticipated all sorts of difficulties which I would not be able to put to rights and which would end up costing me precious money. I guess I do have to trust in the competence of other people and happy endings. Let this be a lesson to me. 

I stripped my bed with Tyke's generous help and put clean sheets on it, which makes me look forward to getting into it tonight. I think Tyke looks forward to it also. I put the used sheets in the washing machine and am hoping to add some other laundry to it. I have to go around the apartment and look for some.

I cleaned up the kitchen, which always needs cleaning, and picked up the leaves of the ivy plant in the living room. I had given it too much water and nearly drowned it, and as a result it lost more than half of its leaves over a period of time. I am waiting for the soil to dry out and won't water it for a long time now. 

That's one thing I always do wrong. I always over water my plants. I'm good with outside plants, but I don't do well with indoor plants. I don't have a green thumb for them at all and don't have any feeling for it whatsoever. I've already nearly killed another plant and I'm waiting for it to come back to life. I think I should have fake plants, though I would probably try to water them too in a subconscious attempt to kill them.

That's when I succumbed to my need to take a nap and I turned up the thermostat and laid down on the sofa to sleep for a while, which turned into a long while. It took up most of my afternoon. 

Oh, now Tyke wants to play with me and the ball and I'm supposed to get it away from him. That's an endless exercise in frustration unless he decides to kindly let go. I'm just going to ignore him until he drops it beside me. I think that's the best method. 

Have a good evening!

Ciao,

Nora

 

If you wish...

The colors for Easter are yellow and lavender, that's what people decorate their interiors with. I thought that was something you might want to know. And I have decided to make deviled eggs on Easter Sunday and to eat those all day long, so I will have a party from breakfast until I go to bed. I haven't had them in a very long time and right now I have a terrible craving for them. I hope my stomach will not be too disagreeable and allow me this simple pleasure. I will get a wonderful overdose of protein and light mayonnaise. I have 6 eggs, so I should be able to eat those in one day if I don't eat anything else. That doesn't sound like an awful lot of food, does it? I must be able to eat more than that.

The Exfactor was just here to borrow my bike. He is restoring a motorcycle and comes to town by train and uses my bike to go to the parts store. He buys things and orders them several times a week. Slowly he is making progress. When the motorcycle is done, he will use it to come to town. We had coffee and watched Tyke's antics who always makes a big deal out of the Exfactor being here and does all his stunts and other attention grabbing tricks. He's a cute dog. I was alright about the Exfactor leaving again when he did. My heart strings weren't pulled too badly. I am very stoic. He has an interesting life away from me and I don't blame him for holding on to it. He has all the things a man could wish for. Freedom, a relationship and motorcycles. Even his girlfriend rides motorcycles, so what more could he wish for? Well, maybe some men wish for fast cars and babes.

I just got a bill for my own deductible for my health care costs for this year. It is 165 Euros and I'm supposed to pay it by April the 19th. That made me laugh out loud. What a sense of humor those people have. It just kills me. I will call and make an arrangement with them to pay it off in monthly segments. You would suppose that somebody would know that people in the lowest income bracket don't have 165 Euros lying around. But no... In the new budgetary plans that were just presented by the cabinet, it is planned to increase it to 750 Euros. There was a large uproar about this, of course. It will make people go broke. It's the most loaded shoulders that carry the biggest burdens.

I'm expecting a visit from a manager of the institution that sends me the domestic help. I don't really know what she wants. Maybe she wants to know how incapable I am or how capable the help is. I can ask her for the third hour too while she is here. I haven't done any cleaning because she's coming. She'll have to take me as I am. Unorganized with full ashtrays. Well, I'll empty those. I may even organize the mail.

I don't feel good on the Welbutrin. I think it does my mood no good at all. In general it is on the low side and sometimes very low after I've just taken it. The first few hours I don't feel all that great and worry a lot. It is especially in the morning that it is bad. I just don't have the courage and the necessary happiness to face the day. The last days I go back to bed and sleep some more, but when I wake up, I feel like I have a hang over and it takes me a while to get myself together. Overall I feel sad. and not at all like I did the first 2 weeks. I wonder now if it was the absence of the other antidepressants that made me feel good the first two weeks and if after two weeks the Welbutrin really started kicking in. Or maybe I only felt pleasant side effects for the first two weeks. Who knows? I'm not a happy camper. Next week it will be 4 weeks that I am on them. I have an appointment with my psychiatrist then.

The woman from the domestic help was just here and wanted to know how I was and if the help was working out and if there were any problems. Since she asked me with such genuine concern, I told her and she is going to arrange for someone to come in twice a week and for it to be the same person. I think that's very nice and maybe now I will get clean windows, which is what I really want. I've been looking at these dirty ones long enough.

Tyke and I just shared a leftover piece of Camembert, he's hopefully wagging his tail, but it is all gone. It did taste nice, but now I'm burping. I probably had too much.

I'm going to lie down on the sofa for 5 minutes and just close my eyes for a little while. It's cold in here.

Ciao,
Nora