Getting down to earth again...

Even though it is the middle of the night and it is the time when I feel most joyful, that doesn't mean that I have to get overly excited now and lose track of my sense of decorum. I'm quite capable of keeping myself in hand and not making a complete fool of myself by declaring all sorts of nonsense. 

I do have to hit the brakes because sometimes I get too much in a hallelujah mood when I'm up this late and have had a cup of coffee or two. My enthusiasm knows no bounds and I run to the top of the mountain before I remember that I have fear of heights and get dizzy and know no way down. 

I must be as sensible as I can manage to be and still be lively and not sit here as a solid and silent rock in a winter's meadow on a boring Sunday. I have to be engaging without being silly, although you may think that me being silly may be a lot of fun. That's only if I'm silly on purpose and not when I accidentally end up looking ridiculous. 

Since yesterday was Saturday, it is hardly a day worth speaking of. It was just another ordinary Saturday like any other. I spend it doing nothing important whatsoever, except that I watched my share of cultural television programs in the morning while I woke up with my obligatory cups of coffee. It does feel good to feed the intellect and my curiosity.  I did miss half of the programs yesterday because I got up too late, but I'll get a chance again this morning when there will be more on. 

There's usually some documentary with an exposure to challenging art which gets my dander up at first, but which I change my mind about as I watch it, although I don't completely change my outlook on it. I am somewhat more enlightened after I've watched it and more appreciative. It's supposed to be a challenge to your mind, after all. I suppose you see the necessity of the art in the time it was made even though you don't have to like it. It's enough that you understand the intention behind it. 

I wrapped Chrstmas presents and didn't run out of paper, which is good because I've got one more present to wrap which hasn't gotten here yet. With a little bit of luck it will be here on Wednesday. The dog tried to help me wrap them and was very disappointed when he was not allowed to be part of the proceedings. The cat was asleep on the bed, so I timed my actions well. I got no cat hair on the sello tape. 

Wrapping the presents did get me into the proper mood and now I can hardly wait for Christmas. The real exciting thing of course is that my daughter will be here and that is what I'm really looking forward to. I'm slowly allowing all of my maternal feelings to come to the surface where they have been buried so long. It almost hurts to let them out. It's a real process.

It's going to be a bit colder for the next couple of days and I'll have to pick my outfit with care in the morning. It will be a question again of being warm enough and looking good. That's really not too difficult if I put my mind to it. In the evening there will be a mixture of snow and rain and I'm really not in the mood for that. I have very little to say about the weather, however. It happens whether I want it to or not. There's nothing as fickle as the Dutch weather.

Today will be another non eventful day as Sundays go. The weekends are often not very exciting. They are turning out to be the dullest parts of the week. Luckily, there are interesting programs to watch on televsion. There will be lots of sports to watch and I enjoy them. Thank goodness I have the animals to entertain me. We pass many happy moments together. The dog alone is enough of an amusement factor. 

I have to go back to bed to finish sleeping. The duvet is turning out to be so good that it's almost too warm to sleep under. 

Ciao,

Nora

Rain on the brain...

I haven't been to bed yet and although I'm sitting here yawning, I've decided to stay up a while longer. I've just watched an Inspector Linley episode and it was exciting as usual with a surprising ending. There's always a twist to the story at the end that I was not counting on. When you think the mystery has been solved, it turns out to be a little more complicated than that.

Now I'm sitting here with my last cup of Senseo coffee and the next cup will be from the coffeemaker that I still have to set up. I'll have to set the clock on it using the instruction booklet and I will have to do that some time in the middle of the night when I get up again, or early in the morning if I'm lucky. I may just surprise myself and sleep all night in one fell swoop, you never know. Stranger things have happened. Usually at this time of night I've already slept a few hours and I'm about ready to get up again. Now I think I'm being smart and I'm skipping that part.

Tyke is standing on the dining table again looking out the window. It pleases him so much to do this and he knows he has to be on his best behavior, otherwise it is not allowed. He can't bother Gandhi if she's also on the table, he has to be a good boy.

I slept until 11 o'clock this morning and had a leisurely cup of coffee while I watched the news and woke up properly. Of course, I also have to bond with Tyke in the morning, so I'm always busy when I first get up. I'm lucky that I don't have to walk him right away, because he'll go out back until I'm dressed and ready. I can take my time. I straightened out the kitchen afterwards and cleaned up all the debris that was strewn out over the living room floor. Tyke had been tearing things apart. He was in one of those moods. He goes looking for things to shred and they're usually unimportant, so I let him. It gets his silliness out.

I called my sister and I think she was glad to hear from me, because it meant that I was still on speaking terms with her. It is true that for a number of days I had felt a lot of frustration with her, but as I got over my own feelings of stress and tension, I got over those feelings too and I was okay again with her and I could talk normally to her. She wanted me to come over to her house, but I had to go to an appointment with my psychiatrist first and I promised that I would come over afterwards.

I rode my bike over to see my psychiatrist and was dressed too warm in my leather jacket, but I hadn't realized how muggy it was going to be. It had been cooler earlier, but in the afternoon it grew warmer and the sun came out, much to my surprise. It's such unpredictable weather.

My psychiatrist and I had a good talk and we agreed, with much input from me, to decrease my antidepressants. I'm doing well now and I'm on a high dose, which doesn't leave me much leeway for when I really need it. It's better to lower the dose as much as I can and to increase it if necessary. I started to decrease it today. He said I should have more energy as the medication has a tendency to constrain your enthusiasm. It makes you a bit dull and flat emotionally. I didn't have to decrease, he left the option open to me. I thought, I'm going to have to do it some time, now is as good a time as ever. I'm quite excited about doing with less medication.

I had to stop by the pharmacy to pick up the proper capsules and then I went to my sister and drank a tall glass of water with ice cubes in it. I was so thirsty. I was standing in the pharmacy completely dried out, looking at the licorice and candy, wanting some and thinking they would make me too thirsty, so I didn't get any. I did regret that afterwards. It would have been nice to share a bag of licorice with my sister.

We had coffee in the garden in which my sister has already planted some flowering plants and it's starting to look pretty. One flowerbed is going to be Mediterranean because it gets a lot of sun. She gave me a book that she had accidentally ordered twice. It's by Marianna Frediksson and it's called Inge and Mira. Last week she gave me the novel Late Night In Twisted River by John Irving. It's a big book that she couldn't get through. I'll try my best. Has anybody read it? It's possibly very boring. John Irving does do that once in a while. Write boring books.

I have to go to bed now. It's time. I do have to try and sleep tonight, much as I'd like to stay up. I have to be sensible.

Have a good morning!

Ciao,
Nora

A hot day for springtime...

My sister and I took the dogs for a long walk and the sun was shining and it was warm outside and I regretted my choice of clothes and the fact that I didn't have anything to drink with me. What I wanted more than anything was a cold Coke, but there weren't any around where we were walking and we only passed a hardware store. When we got home, Tyke immediately went to his water bowl and I went to the refrigerator to drink a lot of cold milk straight out of the bottle. I can do that, because I'm the only one who lives here.

I wanted to change my clothes, but I didn't have time, because my sister came to pick me up to go grocery shopping. We drove there with the windows rolled down and it felt good. Luckily, it was cool in the store, so I wasn't too miserable. I was done shopping quickly, because I almost always get the same old things and I know my way around the store by now. I got the French cheeses and Mr Muscle Cleaner. It's got to work as good as anything and it was on sale. I hope my domestic help is happy with it. She's got to scrub with it.

I first put the groceries away when I got home and then took my tights off and changed my top to a tank top and that was quite a relief. Now I have cool legs and cool arms. It's 20C and much warmer than they had predicted. The sun is shining and they said it would be 17C and cloudy. Tomorrow it's supposed to be 11C and rainy. I hope they get that wrong too. I complain about the cold, but 20C is plenty warm enough for me. It really doesn't need to get warmer than that.

I feel surprisingly unexcited without the urge to write many posts and without the feeling that I have much to announce. I don't feel that I need to declare myself on all sorts of subjects anyway. I'm a bit more subdued than I have been. I'm not quite happy with that, because I like to be a little more lively, with a little bit more spirit. I'll blame it on the too much of antipsychotic that I've had and that is slowly leaving my body. I don't think that was a very good move of my psychiatrist and I'm not happy with it. I've written my SPN an email letting her know, but she is out of the office today and won't get it until tomorrow morning. I'm taking my normal dose of antipsychotics tonight.

I'm going to lie down and take a nap.

Ciao,
Nora