A brief moment in time...

That's what I intend to describe here anyway, although it will probably turn in to a description of many long moments in time because I'm sitting here comfortably with a cup of coffee and a cigarette and am not about to go anywhere. I'm still sleepy enough to be nice and mellow but alert enough to make sense. At least I'm not in one of my hypo-manic moods and floating on a cloud. I'm completely down to earth where I belong. 

I've done some sleeping already because I went to bed early last night. I didn't have the patience to stay up late and watch television. I wanted to get comfortable under the duvet and drift off into sleep and dreamland. I don't remember if I dreamed or not. If I did, it wasn't very impressive because nothing stayed with me. They must have just been very ordinary things that weren't worth remembering. 

I hope that when I go back to bed, the rest of my night will be like that also. 

There's not much to talk about when you're down to earth where you belong. I'm frantically searching in my mind for subjects to discuss and all I can think of are the things I already talked about on my other blog. I don't want to fall into repetition so I won't be discussing them.  I suppose that I'm not as alert as I thought I was because normally I have no problem coming up with things to talk about. 

That warrants another cup of coffee and I'm drinking it now. Hopefully it will loosen me up a bit. It's a terrible thing when your mind lets you down. It's the one thing you have to be able to rely on. That's why you have to run a little interference every now and then and give it a little stimulance. A mind on its own sometimes can't do a lot but sit there and be very dull. And that is very boring. 

My therapist wants me to see a woman who does breathing and relaxation techniques. She teaches you how to do them. My therapist thought they might be good for me to know because I now use tranquilizers. I'm somewhat interested in this and already know the woman who teaches them from yoga classes that I took a long time ago and I know that she's a very agreeable person.  I was happy to hear that she made it through the budget cuts. 

Today I have to go to a center of activities to see if there's a creative class I may be interested in. Hopefully there's a group of women I will find something in common with. I have to meet the leader of the group today. I'm a bit nervous about this because it's a new venture, but it is very close to where I live. It's a ten minute walk away from the apartment so it couldn't be better. I just have to gather up my courage. Whatever I have of it. 

You wouldn't think I was scared of trying out new things but I am. I'm less brave than you may think I am. There's always a hurdle I have to get over. I can talk myself out of things very easily. I mustn't do that this time because it is an opportunity to get involved with something interesting and to be socially engaged. I must be courageous. 

I'm going to take my somewhat timid self to bed now and get some more sleep. If I'm able to after this second cup of coffee. I may be too wired. Maybe I'll have to pay Facebook a visit first. I'll see.

I hope you're all having a good night.

Ciao,

Irene

So early in the morning...

If you want to read about the computer modem and about dreams and early morning happiness, you can do that here, and I highly recommend it to get you into the proper mood. It does require some of your time, but I'm sure you have some extra of that lying around on a lazy Tuesday morning in November while  it is cold outside. 

I'm cold myself inside in the early morning hours and have just turned the  thermostat up to a more comfortable temperature. It will be toasty warm here in a little while, It doesn't take much to heat up the apartment and I will be able to turn off the heater in a while again and it will stay warm enough in here. That's the comfort of living in a small place that's not too drafty. 

I've been up long enough now to have a sore bum from sitting in my desk chair, but then I get one easily for having broken my tail bone once. It does get uncomfortable if I sit in one position for a while. I have to shift my rear end a lot. I should sit on many soft downy pillows, but I don't have those and the ones from my bed don't work. They are not soft enough and only make the problem worse. They are okay for a head, but not for a bum. 

The coffee tastes especially nice this morning, but then I made a strong pot of it. I measured generously and gave the coffee a real kick, just the way I like it. I do so dislike a weak cup of coffee, like you get in roadside diners along American highways. Truckers are supposed to be happy with that. I bet if they had their say it would be a little bit stronger to make the long haul more bearable. 

I've never had a worse cup of coffee than in those diners, even though they pour it generously. The exception being that French roadside restaurant that had atrocious coffee that didn't deserve the name and did the French reputation shame. They are supposed to have the best cup of coffee on the continent, although I tend to disagree and think that we do. Some chauvinism is involved.

I've had my medicines and am waiting for them to work and assume I will be nice and mellow then, although I am not unhappy now. I've decided to take two tranquilizers during the day, those make me just relaxed enough. One was pushing my luck just a little bit and I was on edge unnecessarily. They are a very low dose and I'm not worried about them. I barely notice them working, but they do make a difference. 

I have to go see my SPN this afternoon and I will find out when the reassessment of my treatment will be. It should be this week and I will be present during it, so I hope it doesn't conflict with any of my other appointments. There should be a bit more careful planning as it can't be assumed that I'm always available, but that doesn't seem to have dawned on anybody. I will make that a point today. Some things are left very unclear.

There's some question as to whether I'm going to bed again now to sleep some more or drink more coffee to stay fully awake. There's a great temptation to stay up and get dressed and take Tyke for a walk in the cold November air. It's foggy outside again, but not especially very cold and there's no wind, of course. I'm slightly loopy, though, and may not be able to make a long walk. 

It's possible that the cold air will wake me right up and I will be full of vigor again once I'm out. I do wish I had a country lane to saunter down and Tyke to let off the leash. It would be such a much more pleasant walk. We'll have to do with the sidewalks of the suburbs and the semi pleasant trees and shrubbery of that landscape. And the layers upon layers of fallen leaves that have not been swept yet and that's going to be an impossible task.

For now Tyke is sound sleep on the sofa and there is not a peep out of him, so I have some time. He has been out back early this morning to do his biggest business, so there's no rush. I do appreciate when he does that. It takes the pressure off to get going immediately. I can be a little more leisurely.

I'm going to get another cup of coffee and bid you goodbye. I will get dressed and see how far I get. Maybe I will get stuck halfway though and will have to join Tyke on the sofa for a quick nap. 

Have a fantastic Tuesday.

Ciao,
Nora

 

At long last...

I don't know how many of you have been waiting for a post to show up here, but finally there is one. I have been trying, unsuccessfully, to set up another blog, but I have only a few followers there and today I became very disheartened and decided to call it quits there and return to this one. It was not meant to be. I think of that other one as my bad luck blog.

I will be posting on this blog regularly from now on. At least once a day. I am a prolific writer and I always find some excuse to write a post and add my thoughts to the vast world that is the Internet.

For those of you who followed me to the other post and back again, I thank you for your patience. I know I look like a fickle woman and I probably am, but things didn't work out the way I had planned them to. Stay tuned for a regular post here. There will be one coming up soon.

Ciao,
Nora

Happiness.

As of Sunday last week, after that long nap in the afternoon, I started coming out of my depression and climbed the hill back to the top until I got there. As of this morning, when I woke up at 5:30 am, I am standing on the highest peak and looking at the world all around me and finding much happiness in it. I am alive again. I speak, I laugh, I am animated, I am interested, I am full of fun, I am wonderfully present and I could go on and tell you how good I feel, but you'll have to take my word for it.

It's a most precious and exciting thing to be this alive. Everything about me seems to shine and I feel like a new person in a new skin with a new outlook. I could embrace the world and let everybody know how happy I am with them. Well, I do my best to convey that message and I radiate positivism and it bounces back to me. You are a mirror to the world and what people see in you gets reflected back to you. People cheer up, because I'm cheered up. I actually have conversations with people, because I am awake and alert and on the ball.

So, I had a very early morning to start with and that suited me just fine, because I was alert from the start and didn't sit around trying to figure out who I was and what day it was. I very cheerfully made myself a mug of coffee and even got a little bit of computer time in, which was a nice way to waste an hour or so. And then I very quickly got dressed and while I was doing so, at eight am, my upstairs neighbor rang the doorbell and wanted to spend a whole hour with me while she waited for her taxi. Well, of course I wasn't about to, so I told her that I was getting ready and that I would be leaving soon. Can you imagine, at eight am?

I finished getting ready and walked the dog and hopped on my bike in the sunshine and got to the clinic early, where I sat on the deck with an espresso and had a lovely conversation with a man who is in two of my creative classes, but who I never had a good talk with. So that was nice and let me tell you, first impressions don't mean a thing, because that man is ever so nice and I didn't think he was when I first met him. He is ever so much smarter and interesting than he gave the first impression of.

Pretty soon the rest of the people started showing up and it got busy on the deck and there was a lot of joking around going on. Joviality all over the place, at least that's how I experienced it. I am seeing everything through rose tinted glasses, so my view of the world is very benign. I am like the kindly mother looking with great fondness at all her dear children.

I hollowed out my sculpture that I made last Friday and got as much clay out of it as I could without ruining it, Then I had a long hard look at the picture of the next sculpture I was going to make and tried to figure out all the different shapes and angles and what was there that I couldn't see. I was gathering my courage and then got a big block of clay and thought, "Oh my God, where do I start?" Well, you dig in at one point and just start with one section and hope for the best. Slowly things begin to make sense after you've made all kinds of mistakes that you correct along the way. Clay is very forgiving that way.

Soon it was break time and we all took our coffees into the stinking smoker's room and because we were all women we talked about boobs and diets and bums, which was cause for great hilarity, because some of us had too much of them and some of us not enough. There was only one person there with a nearly perfect figure and she wouldn't have believed it if you had told her.

Then it was back to the clay again and we worked like regular artists, with high concentration and hardly a word between us, except to say help if we got stuck. The morning goes by too quickly and before you know it, it is time to clean up and get all the clay dust of your clothes.

I pedaled my bike home very merrily, although it looked like it was going to rain, but that never manifested itself. I came home and fed the Überhund and took him for a walk, wearing a jacket against the chill wind. It's cooled of quite a bit now and it's not very warm outside and it is overcast. I'm wearing an extra cardigan, because I have the windows open on a crack to air the apartment.

The Exfactor was here for 15 minutes having a cup of coffee and he is going to pick up Nouri on Thursday or Friday afternoon and take her home with him. Officially he is not supposed to have any pets, but since he has all linoleum, he is going to take a chance and see if he can get away with it. I'll be glad when she's gone, because I can't live with the pressure of her doing her business in the neighbor's flowerbed. The Exfactor has already informed the neighbor.

There are many birds chirping outside and I wonder if that has to do with the change in the weather. Of course, it sounds like they are making many happy sounds, but maybe they are saying, "Hey, get in your nest, it's going to rain." Or, "There will be nice rain worms out in a while."

I've made a change to my other blog. I no longer show different images with a randomly generated title there. I now show Altered Images and that is the name of the blog too. So far, I have altered the Exfactor's images, because I have so many of them, but I will do my own too. You can go there here. I hope you enjoy them and notice the difference between the originals. I will do one a day. Bookmark this page.

I looked especially spiffy today with my gray toned empress dress and my gray leggings and my gray bolero, all just different shades of gray with a green necklace. I got complimented on it by a good dresser herself. It does my heart good. Ton sur ton. It works if you do it right.

Here are some pictures I just took:





Have a super splendid rest of the day with sugar on top and whipped cream on the side.

Ciao...