Kindly spirited...

When I wake up from my afternoon nap, I always feel very kindly towards the world and all the people in it. I have a totally untroubled mind. If anybody calls me at that time, I am all sweetness and I have all the patience needed to have whatever conversation is necessary. 

This mood lasts about an hour. By that time I have taken my evening dose of medicines and I am in another kind of good mood that is almost equally nice, but I'm not as sweet and patient anymore. I've got more stress by that time, having been awake long enough to have the reality of life penetrate my mind again.

Not that my reality is such an awful one. It is all in my imagination. It is my own fearful heart that makes it look that way. My reality is actually quite simple, but something in me doesn't experience it that way and sees bogeymen in every corner.

It's a terrible thing to live with a fearful heart because it prevents you from living life with full enjoyment. It's much better to be untroubled like that person who just woke up from her nap and who exists in the world like a newborn child. Unafraid. 

It's very possible that newborn children are not at all unafraid and that some of them have their fears too. If so, I may have been one of them. My mother told me once that I sure did an awful lot of crying when I was a baby. I may have been uneasy all alone in my crib. I wanted to be held by my father. 

I wonder what happens to you when you take that afternoon nap to make you feel so untroubled and kind? It must be a very soothing thing to do. It must be very good for your wellbeing. I wonder if people in southern countries don't have the right idea when they take their siestas. Or don't they do that any longer in today's society? I must ask my sister's Italian friend, but he's from Milan and that's in northern Italy. It may not be a custom there. 

I would always like to have the innocence I have when I wake up from my afternoon nap and to be so nonjudgmental.  It would be a lot easier to live with myself. 

Ciao,

Nora

Waking up...

I've managed to sleep about 7 hours and I'm now waking up with a cup of coffee and a cigarette. At least I've had a fairly normal night's sleep and I feel well rested, which does not mean that I will not seek out the sofa later today for a small nap. But that will be after I've taken care of the things I have to do here, such as pay the bills and do the dishes and sweep the floors and dust the furniture, not necessarily in that order. I will do them in my own meticulous way and it will all make sense, though I will pay the bills first, because that weighs the heaviest and is the greatest relief when it is done.

I can't get the show on the road the first thing in the morning. I first need to sit here and gather my thoughts and drink a few cups of coffee and make a slow start. I do that best by writing a post. I get my brain organized that way and in running condition. It's a very selfish way to start the day, because I only have my own objectives in mind. Of course, I write with you in mind and I do want to make sense, but mostly I write for myself and to get myself ready for the day.

I'm still sitting here in my pajamas and Tyke has been to do his business out back for now. I'm not quite ready to take him for a walk. I need more coffee before I do that. I need to be awake more. I'm still yawning and I think I need at least one more cup of coffee. I will make that as soon as I have the wherewithal to get up. These things take a little bit of planning. You can't do them spontaneously. It would upset the fragility of the early morning ritual.

Okay, I've got my cup of coffee now and a new supply of cigarettes. That ought to give me some renewed vigor. If that doesn't work, I don't know what will. I will be forced to go back to bed and start all over again, in which case I will delete this post. I have to stay up, though, because I'm expecting a package this morning with the things I ordered on line the other day.They're supposed to be here between 9 am and 1 pm, which is a long wait and then I have to make sure they don't shove it in the mailbox while I sit here and wait. That's what they did the time before last with my cardigan.

I probably spend an inordinate amount of time talking about clothes on this blog and I don't know how I got that way either. I didn't used too be that way. So very female. I care about clothes very much and I like nice things and I care about the way I look. There was a long time when I was really overweight when I could not do that, when I wore whatever fit me. As I lost the weight, I started caring again about what I wore, as I had before when I became a liberated female. Becoming liberated meant developing my own style in clothing, not bound by anybody else's taste. Not dressing like a wife or a mother. Not thinking about what role I had to play.

I would like to believe that I invent myself now and that I make up my own mind about what I look like within the possibilities that I have. I don't want to be conventional, yet not so absurd that I look odd. I don't want to dress my age, that's for sure, nor does that run in my family. Neither one of my sisters dresses her age, especially not my older sister. My mother was more conventional and dressed like Hyacinth Bucket and had her hair fixed the same way. At least she always looked nice and presentable, although not especially daring. I don't think she quite had the courage for that. I think it is easier for people of my generation to look less conventional. We are not so restricted by rules.

I will look for something nice to wear in a while. I will be something different than I wore yesterday. I don't want to slip into a rut and I easily want to be able to try on the new dresses that I'm expecting today. I hope they fit and that I don't have to lose weight first. If I do, though, it will be a challenge, because they don't come in a bigger size.

I need one more cup of coffee and I'll be totally awake, although I'm on my way now real well. You can probably tell by the way of writing. It's suddenly taken a more upbeat turn after a very slow start. I shall overcome the slow motion of the morning.

I've got to pay bills now. Wish me luck.

Have a good day.

Ciao,
Nora

Sunday once more.

Is it just me or is it really Sunday every time I turn around? It seems like it was Sunday just the other day, not so very long ago, and that I was thinking then how it was possible that it was Sunday again. They say that time goes by quicker when you get older, so I must be getting really old, because it is racing by, it seems to me.

I don't know how I feel about that. I suppose I have mixed feelings. On the one hand I like it, because everything happens quickly and at an amazing speed, at the other hand that also means that the clock is ticking away very quickly and my days on earth are numbered. I will get older quicker, before I'm ready to.

It is an amazing thing that time is relative and that we experience it all at our own speed and that an hour or a minute can feel differently to two different people. A month seems like no time at all to me, while it may seem like a very long time to someone else. One month is nothing, a week is but several long breaths, a day is one inhalation. Poof, and it's gone. I'm lucky if I know which month we live in, let alone which date it is.

That's why it is so handy to have the computer on. When I think of it, I can look and see that today is Sunday, March the 8th, 2009. Unluckily for me, today is exactly 20 years since my mother died, but I won't dwell on that, because life is for the living and not for forever mourning the dead. So, I salute my mother, wherever she is, and get on with it.

It is raining outside, so I can't walk the dog yet. He patiently waits on his blanket. I need to feed him, but want to wait a little bit, because he'll really have to go out after that.

After having not done anything significant in the apartment for several days, I finally dragged out the vacuum cleaner yesterday afternoon and vacuumed the whole apartment. That sure made a difference. I get stuck behind the computer and fail in my housework to the detriment of everything. The computer is a dangerous thing for me, because although I always tell myself that I'm not hooked on it, I believe the opposite is true and I spend too many hours behind it.

I find it difficult to shut the computer off and would rather leave it on all day long so that I can sit down behind it at every opportunity. Of course, when given a choice between cleaning the bathroom or reading blogs, I read blogs. If the computer were turned off, I would not sit down as quickly to do that. There would be a little bit of a hindrance and that would be just enough to keep me from sitting down behind it. Some small bit of common sense would prevent me from turning it on.

The truth is that I have that schedule to stick to and that I avoid it like the plague. I never look at it, preferring to go about things in a half assed way and letting them get out of hand and having to fix them all at once in one fell swoop. I could make my life so much easier if I stuck to the schedule, but I am one for instant gratification and want to do all the fun things immediately. Never mind that I have to pay a price for it somewhere down the line.

And I will tell you something. Very often I end up being stressed out from sitting behind the computer so much. It's because it is a compulsion and almost against my free will. I sit behind it past the point of enjoyment and stubbornly keep going when I should have turned it off already and gone and done something else. That's how addicted I can be. So all in all it's a very dubious love affair. It's a dysfunctional relationship.

I like it better when I go through periods when the computer doesn't have the upper hand. When I am in control of when I turn it on. I just don't seem to be in a period like that right now. Somehow I have to fix that.

In the meantime, it's still raining and I let the dog out on the patio, but he was not very interested in being out there. It's supposed to stop raining this afternoon, but I doubt we'll be able to wait that long.

Lest you think I'm heartless for not dwelling on the anniversary of my mother's death, I have my reasons for that, but they are too intricate to explain here and some of you will already know them.

I have to get dressed and find an umbrella.

Ciao...

The O.K. Corral.

Well, everything is okay at the O.K. Corral. The critters have been fed and watered and the head critter has been walked and took the opportunity to take a dump three times, which makes my habit of carrying many baggies a very fortunate one. I don't know what he has been eating to cause such an overproduction, or maybe he simply had been saving it up, because I didn't take him out late last night. I find that he doesn't urge me on to go once I've got my pajamas on and that he very happily trudges off to the bedroom with me to go to sleep.

He does, however, wake me up at 7 AM, for no good reason that I know off, because when I let him out back, he really doesn't do anything and if I give him food, he doesn't want to eat. I think that he thinks it is a good time to wake up and it actually is during the week, so I can count on him to waken me on time. I have a radio controlled alarm clock with two alarm times, but they are set for times during the day when I have to remember to take my medicines. So, it's a good thing that he wakes me up when he does, I just wish that he could differentiate between weekdays and weekends. He is not quite that clever.

The weather is gorgeous outside. The sun is shining and it is 8 degrees Celsius, that's 46 degrees Fahrenheit. It's paractically summer. Still, I am dressed in layers as attractively as I can, because it is a little bit cold inside.

Every morning I have the joy of picking out what I am going to wear, but I think about it ahead of time and am full of anticipation. It's like getting into the 'dress up box' and inventing a new costume every day. Actually, it's like I'm reinventing myself every day in a costume play and I participate in a real life movie production. Oh wait, I forgot the soundtrack.

I filled a new MP3 stick with Jazz albums and then transferred all the songs to a map called Jazz under My Music in my PC. From there I was able to transfer the whole map all at once to my iTune Player, which is something I was unable to do with the Real Player. So, yes, I recommend the iTune player from Apple. As I sit behind my PC, I listen to the music and when the PC is shut off, I listen to the MP3 stick that is connected to my sound system. That way I have a soundtrack to my life. It's fun to listen to the new music, as I don't hear all of it when I download it, of course. I think I made good choices this time.

Did I tell you I got a new watch? I had been wearing a very cheap, but functional watch for many years now, but it was very plain and unassuming and the stretch band had become much too big for me when I lost all the weight and I had to push it up practically to my elbow. I decided that I deserved a new watch and I got a very nice one from the brand Elle. It's got a unique shape and I am quite happy with it and keep looking at it. I am so glad that it is I who is spoiling me. That I can do these things for myself, because I'm worth it, as the commercial goes. I got it at a discount store so I only paid a little money for it, but you can't tell by looking at it. It comes with a warranty also, so I am happy.

You know, I never feel guilty when I spend money on myself and that is something new for me, because when my kids were growing up, I spent very little money on myself. I remember having a very small wardrobe and it not being very fashionable. Jeans and T-shirts mostly with the odd sun dress. For some reason, I thought I didn't deserve having money spent on me.

That all changed when I hit my late 30's and I developed a real love for clothes and I started to trust my own instincts about them. When I gained a lot of weight for a while there, due to the medications, I lost my interest in clothes, but now that I've lost so much weight, all the interest is back with a force and I find nothing more satisfying and fun than to shop for an item of clothing and to match it to something I already have in my closet. There is sheer joy in that. I used to love buying new books with the same amount of passion. I also like to buy necklaces and right now I am wearing two of them that click against each other when I move and I like that sound.

My mother loved clothes and used to dress like Hyacinth Bucket in Keeping Up Appearances. She looked very much like her. It wasn't until my mother's death, that I felt the freedom to start dressing like a real female and become more than casually interested in what I wore. It's like I finally had the room and the gumption to do that, now that her critical eye would no longer linger on me and find fault and she could no longer comment on how I dressed, whether that was negatively or not. I just didn't want to be noticed by her physically at all. You can't imagine what liberty I felt, especially when soon after I left my first husband and I could be the complete female I wanted to be. The more skirts and dresses I am wearing, the better things are going with me. Which doesn't mean that I don't want to get a pair of skinny jeans.

I have two pairs of bell bottom pants that are frayed at the edges from dragging over the pavement and I think I am going to get rid of them, because I think they are not at all flattering, but they were the style when I bought them. Sometimes you can make such fashion mistakes. You think you want the latest in jeans, when those are not at all right for you. It's really great when you make the right choice immediately and many times I have bought an item of clothing that I know will be a keeper for more than one season. Sometimes I buy a total dud and take it back. Well, your closet is like an art collection and sometimes you have to take something out and add something else in.

Well, I am sure it's all been very fascinating to you, this talk about clothes. There is more to it than meets the eye. There is the whole psychology of clothes.

Okay, I've got to clean up the kitchen, duty calls me now. Have yourselves a terrific Sunday.

Ciao...