Of course, of course...

I am sitting here with a strong cup of coffee. I need it because I am so sleepy. I want to take a nap at every opportunity. I think that is because I've quit smoking. It seems to me that I had this reaction before. Of course, I can't keep sleeping. I will have to get up now and then too. I hope this coffee gives me some perkiness. I only made one cup because I thought it would be enough but I may have to make more. 

Of course, taking naps is one way to get through the day if I can't smoke. It does occupy my time. I have to think of things to do to keep my mind off the cigarettes that I can't have. If I just sit in my armchair without anything to do it gets too difficult. I do need to be a bit diverted. This morning there were cultural programs on televsion that helped me keep my mind busy. Now I'm trying to do the same thing with the internet. 

I make it sound like I'm having a heck of a time not smoking but it really isn't that bad. It's all within the limits of my control. I'm not going crazy yet with withdrawal but I ám having an allergic reaction to the nicotine patches. Where they are and have been, I have perfect squares of bright red skin. That does make you think, doesn't it? 

Because it's the weekend, I don't have much on the program. On top of that it's a three day weekend because on Monday it is Queen's Day and that is a national holiday. Actually, I can be as lazy as I want to be and that's the nice part about it. I can take naps whenever I want. As long as I take care of the animals, I can have totally unstructured days and nights. I'm sure there's some advantage to that.

It's actually a warm day here today and it feels like it's 23 degrees Celcius outside. Isn't that unbelievable? I've got the kitchen window wide open so I can smell the fresh air. Unfortunately, there's hardly any wind so there's not much of a draft. Still, I mustn't complain. It was raining during the night and now it's dry, although the sun is not out completely. I hope the weather stays good like this for the whole three day weekend. The queen deserves good weather to celebrate her day in. 

The coffee has perked me up properly and I am functioning again. One cup turned out to be enough but it was a strong one. I think the dog wants to go for a walk so I better take him now. He acts like it's urgent. Of course, he always does. 

Have a nice day.

Ciao,

Irene

Aiming for homeruns...

I slept very deep and soundly until I woke up because I had to go to the toilet. Much to my consternation, but not surprisingly, I turned out to be quite awake after that and the dog had to go out back for a piddle. The cold air got rid of whatever remainder of sleep was left in my head and I had to put on my bathrobe to get warm again. Coffee was quickly made and a cup easily downed. That almost completed the waking up process.

I'm working on my third cup now and have finished what was in the pot, yet I'm still yawning. Those must be the last vestiges of sleep I have in me and that stubbornly hang on. At least I'm not yawning as severely and dangerously as when I first got up. It is abating a bit now. I also don't have tears running down my face like I sometimes do. Everything is under control. After this last cup of coffee I will be right as rain. The caffeine will have caught up with me. 

It's with some amount of joy that I sit here and realize that today is Sunday. It will officially be my day off and I have done most of my chores yesterday. I only have a small stack of mail to look through, but there shouldn't be any surprises in it. I don't expect any bills. It is all innocuous mail that's easily dealt with. I no longer have the fear of mail that I used to have and I empty the mailbox almost every day. As a rule, half the time there's nothing really important in it and sometimes there's a nice surprise. Yes, those do exist too. 

I will dress up in my finest and pretend I have some place special to go to. You never know when the queen will summon me to have a cup of tea with her. There will be cultural programs on TV and speed skating from Russia. The weather should be good and I will take the dog for a longer walk, providing he co-operates and doesn't stubbornly stop at every tree and bush and blade of grass. My patience does wear thin after a while. I'm not the angelic figure I pretend to be. 

I have not made good yet my intention to pick out a novel from the bookcase. It quite frankly slipped my mind, showing you that reading doesn't take a high priority on my list of things to do. I must not have the right mind set. I spend an inordinate amount of time watching inane programs on TV. That's how lazy I get. I even like how irritated I get with them and find myself making negative remarks about them out loud. That must serve a purpose somehow. It probably makes me feel superior. I really do need to read a good book. A critical mind is a terrible thing to waste.

I must get back to bed. It's time to get the rest of my sleep under the comfortable duvet. The next time I'm up, it will be morning and the sun will be up too. Hopefully, the day will be bright and full of promise. 

Ciao,

Nora

No blues for the happy few...

Well, it's not as if I ever have the blues when I get up in the middle of the night, but I'm also not planning on having them for the rest of the day. They are the remotest thing from my mind. I'm sitting here quite contentedly with a cup of coffee and a cigarette and my mood is somewhere in the middle range where it belongs. I'm not having a terrific high from which I will tumble down to a terrific low. 

Having established that, I can now get on with writing the rest of this post, which may not be as easy as it seems. It does require some thinking capacity and I don't know how capable I am of that right now. I'm enormously distracted by the cat and the dog who are racing through the apartment hell bent on making as much racket as they can. I do hope that they settle down soon. 

Yesterday was a lovely day as Sundays go. Because it's a day I don't have any expectations of, it usually turns out well. I leave some chores to do to prevent boredom on that day and that works out well. I changed the bed and did laundry and washed the dishes and generally picked up the place so it looked tidy. It always has to look clean enough for the queen to be able to drop by unexpectedly.

This was after I had slept late in the morning and had taken my time getting my act together with a few cups of coffee. And after I had walked the dog in the sunshiny day. It's getting awfully boring to have nothing but sunshiny days. Oh, just wait and see, I'll come to regret those words.

Later in the afternoon I hopped on my bike and saw my sister and her friend and had a cold beer and Italian cookies that were made with Amaretto. Delicious! I had a cappuccino later to sober up again. 

My sister had gotten her first pair of reading glasses with a correction in one lens for her astigmatism. We made a date to go to Specsavers to get my glasses fitted and she will help me pick out a nice frame. I can trust her to do that. I will have to get varifocal glasses with also a correction for my astigmatism. My sister and I both have that in the same eye.

The dog was happy to see me return home and I took him for a walk and then had my dinner. I had mackerel in green pepper sauce and cheese. It was nice and warm inside and I didn't have to change my clothes, although I was skimpily dressed and stayed so for the rest of the evening. Enough sunshine still gets in through the living room windows in the afternoon to warm up the place.

It was great to get into a clean bed, but the duvet cover I have on there now is just a little thick and I was too warm at first. I had to cool down sufficiently first before I could pull the duvet over me. Then it was nice to get warm and I was asleep in no time. 

I woke up because the dog was gently barking at me for no reason that I could figure out. It must have been boredom that made him do it. It's never the cat that wakes me up, it's always the dog. He's like a spoiled toddler. 

Because today is Monday, I can't sleep late. As a matter of fact, I'll have to set the alarm clock. But it's that way for anybody, I'm no exception. I'm already yawning now, so that's a good sign. I'll be asleep again in no time.

I hope you'll all have a great day.

Ciao,

Nora

Holding down the fort...

It's not much trouble holding down the fort if you share it only with a dog and a cat. The cat barfs and you grumble and clean it up with a paper towel. The dog sneaks in a stick and chews it up all over the place and you grumble a lot and get on your hands and knees and clean all that up. But most of the time, it's not that much work. They are fairly civilized as animals go. So, holding down the fort is not too bad a job. 

That's why I could be lazy today and spend a large portion of it on the sofa, some of it asleep. I slept through the first part of the televised celebration of Queen's Day. I woke up because the phone was ringing, but I was too incoherent to answer it. I first had to eat something and have a cup of coffee and I still sat there bleary eyed after that.

Luckily, the whole royal family was at that point traveling on the royal bus from one town to the other, so I could take my time waking up and I was coherent by the time they arrived and were welcomed by the mayor and the crowd dressed in orange. The festivities commenced and once again it was shown how much they are adored by the public and how informal the royal family is. People addressed the queen without the least bit of hesitation and the rest of the royals as if they were favorite family members.

I'm in need of a cup of coffee now and I just started a new pot. It will be done shortly. I was starting to yawn. No doubt that is because I've been so lazy. All I've done is walk the dog twice. I'm in need of caffeine. 

I've got a cup now and very good it tastes too. That should perk me up a bit. I don't know how quickly the caffeine will work, but I'm typing this slowly so it will catch up with me. I do have to think about what I want to write. I can't write about royalty every day, much as I'd like to. It would be such an easy subject. Instead of writing about myself, I could just tell you what the various members of the royal family had been up to.

I've taken my medicines and should think about taking the dog for another walk. He's lying by my feet pretending to sleep, but in the meantime he's alert to my every move. 

The weather has been beautiful today. There was sunshine all day. We really need rain because of the fire danger, but there's none in the forecast. Whoever said this was a rainy country? 

Have a great evening.

Ciao,

Nora

Sleepless in the Netherlands.

Well, here I am in the middle of the night wide awake for a change. I shouldn't say for a change, because I'm more often awake in the middle of the night, aren't I? I do make a habit of it sometimes. I slept for a couple of hours and woke up and was as bright and bushy tailed as a raccoon on a food hunt in the suburbs. I couldn't wait to get up out of bed and get the coffee machine started and turn the computer on. I was ready to live during the night for a while. What the morning will bring is of later concern. Maybe I will collapse, but I don't care right now. I'm throwing caution to the wind.

I was lying in bed last night and couldn't sleep at first. I kept telling myself that I had half an hour to fall asleep, but I couldn't get comfortable. It was too hot with the covers on and then it was too cold with them off. I made a compromise by having them half off. I tried to meditate, but my mind kept wandering to other intruding thoughts, so that was not a success. I tried to make a deal with the Higher Being to show me Nirvana, but that was to much to ask. I finally just went to sleep.

I was awakened by Tyke who was pestering Gandhi. He does pick the most opportune moments for that. When he realized he was caught, he tried to be a little puppy and cuddle up to me in bed. I would have none of that and got up to go to the bathroom, seeing to my dismay what time it was. But then I did not despair and decided to make the best of the situation and to just stay up and amuse myself. There's always something to do in the middle of the night if you use your imagination.

I answered my emails first and luckily there were enough of them there to keep me occupied for a while. I do try to draw out that process when I have the time for it and because of the time differences, I hope for some responses the same night. It keeps me busy. Sometimes I like nothing better than having a good long chat via an email, especially if it's reciprocated. Some people are very brief, which causes me to be brief also, but there's really no reason why I can't answer in a longer email. I just have to use my imagination.

I always feel so good in the middle of the night. I don't have a care in the world. Everything that I may worry about during the day doesn't exist during the night. Not that I have that much to worry about during the day. They are just the minor issues of life. No head breaking things. They're just little obstacles to be got over. They are so minuscule that they are hardly worth mentioning. They are midges and not mosquitoes or deer fly. Fruit flies too in the green waste basket. They've come for the apple peels, but where they come from lord only knows.

Today my personal helper is coming, but my domestic help will not be here. That's why I need to do the chores. It's a good thing to have someone check in with me and keep me on my toes. I could slip into an attitude of nonchalance easily and let things slide. It's good that I know someone will be here to see if I'm holding up my end of the deal. I do have a tendency to put things off indefinitely and never get around to them. I wasn't always like that, but this seems to be me in my new incarnation. Before I was always walking around with a damp cleaning rag in my hands, even if I was on the phone, especially then so I didn't waste time. It was a bit neurotic.

The weather is going to be much cooler for the next 5 days. temperatures around 15 C. I don't mind. It just means wearing more clothes and that is easy. It's taking clothes off when it gets hotter that's the problem. I like getting dressed up, so I'm fine with it. It will give me the chance to wear some clothes I haven't worn in a while. I'm thinking of one colorful, long sleeved dress in particular. I haven't worn it since I've lost weight and I'm curious as to how it will fit me now. There are a few things in my closet that I want to try out since I've lost weight. It will be a whole new discovery.

There's no chance of a right wing coalition, thank goodness, so now the Liberal Democrats will have to form a coalition government with the parties to the left, which is much more to my liking. Which ones they are exactly going to be is not clear yet, there's to be some major negotiation. I hope for the best and that the parties I trust most will be chosen. Somehow they have to make it work or there will have to be new elections and those may not turn out so well. I hope wisdom reigns. Hopefully the queen will exercise her influence and steer everyone in the right direction. She's well informed and modern enough to know what that should be and she has her advisers.

I think I will take a shower now and get dressed in my finest duds. It may take me a while to put an outfit together, but I have time. It is early still and the birds are singing. The sun has just come up and the sky is still overcast. Doubtlessly it is cold outside. I will dress warmly when I take Tyke out for his walk.

Have a good day you all.

Ciao,
Nora

Early in the morning on a Wednesday.

It's early in the morning again and I have been up for a while. I thought I would take the opportunity when I felt rather good and write a post. That is, if my little dog is going to let me. He is playing with Gandhi right now, but wants to involve me in the game also. Oh, he's decided to lie down by my feet now and be quiet. That's good, it helps if he doesn't jump on the keyboard. It does enable better writing, technically speaking.

I didn't sleep well during the night. My stomach was upset and that bothered me quite a bit. I had a slice of salami before I went to bed and that did not sit well. My gastric band wanted to reject it. The best thing to do was to get up and have things settle down there. A vertical position helps, so does drinking something. A cup of coffee works as good as anything, because it isn't about acid, but about mechanics.

I have to clean house today, because my friend Yvonne is coming over tomorrow afternoon for a cup of tea. That's a good motivation to get some things done around here. I'll gladly clean the apartment if a friend is coming over. I can't think of a better reason to. Well yes, if the queen were to come for tea, but she has yet to let me know if she is. Though why that should matter so much is beyond me. I am a republican, after all, and I don't mean that as opposed to a democrat.

I'm also going grocery shopping with my sister tomorrow afternoon, even though I'm not out of supplies yet, having lived very frugally this past week. I don't know how that happened, but it just did and I have made everything last. I do have to buy special puppy food for Tyke, because he's been getting regular dog food now and I'm sure he needs the special nutrients that are in puppy food. He has a fantastic appetite and would eat nonstop if I allowed it and he likes everything. I'm not used to that.

I've not been reading much these past few days and am still stuck in the same book. I'm nearing the end, though, and will try to finish it today. Then comes the hard choice of what to read next, because I have so many unread books to choose from. I'm thinking of trying Anita Shreve next. I have quite a few of her novels. I was thinking of reading "The Pilot's Wife." Does anyone know that one?

Well, I'm going to take my medicines and lie down for a while. I may even eat some breakfast now that my stomach has settled down again. I'll watch the repeat of the news while I do that. It pays to stay informed.

Have a good day!

Ciao...

It's too early to go to bed.

I was planning on going to bed, but it's really too early to go and it would be slightly ridiculous if I went now. So, instead of that I will write another post and tell you about the amazing paint job I did over the mildewy patches of the living room walls. There, I just told you. No really, I had a nice little can of white paint and a brand new brush and I didn't dribble any paint and very neatly covered up the mildewed patches (of which I don't know the origins) and, as the paint has been drying, the mildewed patches have not reappeared, except for one particularly stubborn spot. I'll slap more paint on there later.

I also keep trying to improve the living room and I found in the junk room a rod iron candle holder for three candles that you hang on the wall. That was just what I needed for one bare spot, but I knew that wall needed screws and I had no drill. But I also remembered that before the last paint job, there had been a hole somewhere in that spot that we had puttied, so I had to try and find it. After a while I did. It was just a little bump and I hammered a nail into it and hung up the candle holder. Then I looked in the junk drawer (every good household has one) and found three matching blue candles and stuck them in and voilà, it was a done deed and it looked nice. I even lit the candles for a while, but then blew them out and decided to save them for a really romantic evening. I am going to have one of those, you know!

Then I got really bold and took a lamp out of the bedroom and added it to a spot beside a chair in the living room, but it was a wrong move and it didn't even grow on me, and I have to take it back to the bedroom when I go there next. Sometimes you want things too much and then you overdo it. It is that way in real life too. Curses!

It's been freezing here and in some places there's an inch of ice on the water. That's not thick enough to skate on, but some daredevils do it anyway. It's going to keep freezing, so by this weekend we should all be able to skate outdoors. Not I, of course, I have no skates. I haven't skated in 30 years and doubt I could do it anymore. That's not at all spoken like a true Dutch woman, because no Dutch woman would say that. Everybody here knows how to skate, it's the law. It's as normal as bike riding. Even the queen knows how to skate. Heck, she even knows how to ski and you don't see the queen of England doing that. Yes, our queen rides horses too. I really shouldn't make a big deal out of that, should I? I mean, why should the queen not know how to skate or ski? She's a normal person of flesh and blood, isn't she? In the end, she's no different than you or me. She's about as royal as my left foot.

The dog's on a diet and is only getting half the food that he was getting. I am buying him some very good dog food, but giving him a little in two portions. He thinks it's fine and loves it and when his bowl is empty he thinks he's had enough. Except for tonight when he went over and in one big vacuuming motion ate all the cat kibbles out of their bowl. I hope he doesn't keep doing that, or I'll have to feed them on the kitchen counter. I do have a small bowl of dried dog food for him, but he is completely ignoring it. He must think eating dried dog food is beneath his dignity. He has to lose 12 lbs at least, but I have to buy him food that he likes to eat, otherwise he'll start begging for his Bonzo bones and those are only for special. He's such a goof ball.

I was sitting here with the blinds wide open letting the whole world see that I'm a woman living all by myself. I guess I always feel safe in this neighborhood, or it is because I have a dog. Little do they know that he is deaf and doesn't even hear the doorbell. It's very convenient that he's deaf when all the fireworks go of at New year's. It's like WWIII broke out, but he doesn't hear it and is not in the least scared. The cats are and go into hiding, the poor things.

Well, my dog thinks it's time to go to bed. He keeps going to the bedroom and coming back here and sighing deeply. I think it has great meaning. I must heed his call.

I hope you will all have a good night and sleep tight.

Ciao,
Nora

Tuesday night...

The news on Jesker is, that he's still improving and that he shows this in many little things he does. Like eating a healthy amount of food and drinking from his water bowl like a normal dog. Like going to the back door to be let out to do a piddle and asking to go for a walk when it is time to. And coming to be petted when he decides that that's what he needs and this I am most happy with. He also corrects Gandhi when she scratches the chair she's not supposed to. That's a huge improvement. He still sleeps an awful lot and at times is completely oblivious to what goes on around him and doesn't wake up no matter what happens in the apartment, but I think that has to do with the fact that he's getting so deaf. I feel pretty secure now in saying that he is getting better and will continue to do so. I am much relieved and think I have learned a lesson to be prepared for the eventual inevitable end and that I will be ready when it comes, or as good as I can be. He was so sick that I thought it was near, and it will always be in the back of my mind now.

Because of that good news, I had a really good day, because you can't imagine how it has set me free to know he's going to be okay. It's put things into perspective and made me appreciate the little things all over again. Not that I didn't, but I do even more now. I think my life is a whole string of little things that go well and Jesker is part of that and a very important part. Good health and well being are so important to what and who we love and we take it for granted until something like this happens. It again reminds you how precarious everything is, and how finely balanced, and how you have to be prepared for the not so good times too. You always have to be strong somehow, in spite of yourself.

I felt so good today, that I even did the grocery shopping myself in between rain showers, even though the Exfactor was here this afternoon and I could have asked him to do them for me. I decided to be a big girl and manage them myself. I made a bare necessities shopping list and checked my bank account balance to make sure I had the money and got my act together. I had a teeny moment of panic just before I left, but I pulled myself together and kept on going and got my shopping bag and my purse and my bike and rode off into the sunset.

Well, not quite, it was still afternoon and it was not raining when I left, but when I came out of the store, it was drizzling, but I packed my groceries in the bags and decided to just get wet and make it home instead of waiting for the rain to end. I do have easy short hair after all and water proof mascara and it's only a five minute bike ride at the most. Just long enough to have rivulets of water run down my face when I got home, but that's the sport of it. The trick is to get the heavily loaded bike into the hallway of the apartment, but I always do manage that somehow without having the bike fall over on top of me. Where there's a will, there's a way and stubbornness pays off.

It felt good to have food in the house again, especially fruit juice and milk which I had completely run out of and I had been using coffee creamer in my coffee, the dried kind that tastes like plastic and artificial ingredients, which it no doubt has plenty off. I think sometimes it's best when I don't have my reading glasses handy and I can't read the label with the ingredients when I hold the jar, otherwise I may not use the product.

In the store, I was completely not tempted to buy anything that was not on my shopping list. I just walked from one item to the next and placed them in my basket and never glanced at all the other alluring items that wanted to go home with me. I have a one track mind. Get in there and buy what you need and get out. All the specials are wasted on me, I never succumb to them. I don't even stop at the very attractive bin of discounted items, even though it is placed where I can't miss it. Advertising doesn't work on me. I don't have the money to spend on it. I buy what I need and that's it. I'm probably the shopper with the smallest budget. They see me coming.

The Exfactor and I got into a political discussion. It's funny to see that we still are on the same road there, even though we've been apart for a year and a half. If anything, I've become a little bit more radical in my way of thinking and have surpassed him in some of my opinions. That's because I form my own nowadays. But we agree on most things, although we disagree on which political party we join and want to see in power. I've veered off to a younger greener party and he has stayed with the more stoic socialists. They're both run by women, but I think my woman is better able. I'm not trying to change his mind, because I think his party is good too, it's just not my party anymore. I needed to make a break and start with something new and innovative.

We both agree on the uselessness of the royal family and think we should have a president, but see no way of bringing that about, because of their popularity. They're like stars because of the cheap media and the paparazzi. People love all those magazines with the latest pictures and stories in them. Not one sensible thought goes into them. We'd like the queen to stand up during her reading of the State of the Union and say, "Listen, this is nonsense and I don't agree with a word of it and I'm not going to say another sentence!" It is written for her by her ministers, after all. We don't know how much she agrees with what she is announcing and we can't hold her personally responsible.

Oh, I'm off on a political rant again. My excuses, it was triggered by this afternoon's discussion. I do have to share it with someone. We have such nincompoops in the governments right now, it makes your blood boil. Indecisive men who don't have any vision, unlike some politicians I know of, and some of the ones trampling each other back stage aren't much better.

End of rant. It's getting late and I ought to go to bed, but I'm not nearly ready for that and I think I will stay up for a bit longer. It's very cozy here in the living room with the sleeping dog and cats and the world silent all around me. I'm yawning, but not nearly asleep yet. I will let it sneak up on me.

It's time to end this ramble. I've gone on long enough. Most of you will be asleep by now and those of you who are not are probably eating dinner or doing some other daytime activity.

Regardless, I wish you all a good night and I will see you tomorrow.

Ciao,
Nora

The Bouncy Castle.

I've bounced back really well after a telephone conversation this afternoon with my daughter and my subsequent session with my SPN, who got my thinking about the problem straightened out. We eliminated some of the darkness in my mind and alleviated some of the pain in my heart, so now I can function again like a normal human being.

I would like to step right back into my hypomanic phase, but I don't think that I'll be so lucky, although I do feel a huge lightening of the load. I wasn't quite done with my hypomanic experiment and wanted many more weeks of trying to keep the reigns in my hands while being so absolutely convinced of my righteousness and superiority. Now I will slowly let that feeling creep back into my being, where I want it to belong and take over the darker clouds that linger in the recesses of my mind. I'm not an undeserving woman, after all. I am convinced of that.

It's strange how your days go. Today I was preoccupied with my own thoughts and I barely paid attention to what was happening around me. I didn't really care that much and thought everybody had to figure it out on their own today, without my two cents worth. I'm usually pretty alert to what goes on around me, but today I didn't give a hoot. I felt insulated by bubble wrap.

The bubble wrap has mostly come off now except for a piece here and there, clinging stubbornly as it will (static electricity), and I'm not so insulated anymore. I felt the sun on my face when I rode my bike to my appointment, pedaling like a mad woman at times and not getting ahead. That bike!

This morning at creative therapy I started to color my doodles with colored ink. I don't know if this is a good idea, but once I started, there was no way back. I just started on my third one and when they are done, I will take pictures of them and post them. It seemed like a good idea, but I am full of doubt.

Hypomanic people are not full of doubt. They are sure about anything they undertake and undertake whatever comes up into their heads, within a certain amount of reason. I mean, they don't go streaking naked down the street. There would be no reason for it, unless they could win a bet or somebody dared them to.

I've just made myself a nice mug of coffee. I am feeling sleepy ahead of time and I can't have that. It's probably the emotions from the past twenty four hours. An over dose of emotions can make you physically tired.

I think that today I'll pretend to be the queen who has been struck by an arrow in her bosom fired by her most ungrateful of subjects, a drunken man who has plotted and schemed for a long time to hurt her most royal majesty where it hurts most. Luckily, it wasn't a poisoned arrow and my head physician was able to remove it without much blood loss and it didn't hit my heart, though it missed it by millimeters. Luckily, I am also ample bosomed and that cushioned the impact.

Well, those are all the fun things I had to tell you today. A sort of rambling post that didn't reveal much of importance, except that I'm still here and as crazy as ever.

I hope you all had a lovely day.

Ciao...