Up early...

I'm up early this morning. I think after going to bed so early last night, and despite being up in the middle of the night, I'm ready to be awake now and start the day. As a matter of fact, I feel in a jolly good mood and I can't wait to get the show on the road. It is with pleasure that I sit here and drink my coffee. I will be fun to hop in the shower and get dressed and walk Tyke while it is still dry, though I will keep my fingers crossed, because it looks like it is going to rain any minute now.

I'm sitting here in my tank top and not much else, because it is warm in the apartment and I haven't got the back door open yet. I will in awhile and open the kitchen window too. It should cool off quite a bit then, but it is too early to do that now. It is barely light outside and the sky looks threatening. We are expecting rain today and if it rained like it did yesterday, it will be another deluge. It came down in buckets as if it was a tropical monsoon and there were big puddles in the street.

I'm expecting the Exfactor today and I'm looking forward to that, because I haven't seen him since last week on Tuesday. It will be nice to sit and have a cup of coffee with him and have a chat, although our chats can be very boring and be about nothing important at all, but about motorcycles and his work. I'll have to give a different twist to them and talk about politics and vegetarianism and the bio-industry. That ought to make it more interesting. He is also going to do the groceries for me, so I can't make our talk too exhausting, otherwise he will not have the energy to do them.

The domestic help is also coming and I have to make sure I clean up the apartment before she comes. Now, that's not any real cleaning that I do, but just picking things up and generally getting things uncluttered and put away or thrown in the trash or the used paper box. I don't actually clean things before she comes, like in scrubbing the toilet or in dusting the furniture. That would be foolish.

I feel like dressing up today, but I think it's going to be too warm to wear many clothes. It's going to be 22C and inside it is warmer. I've washed some clothes and they should be dry now, so I have a lot to choose from. I like nothing better than wearing newly washed clothes, because of the nice scent of them. I do try to keep all of my clothes clean and do a load of laundry as soon as I have one. Sometimes I wash clothes just to get the nice scent back, even though they aren't dirty. I like it when I open my closet and my clothes smell good. When you smoke, that's hard to achieve. You always have a tendency to carry that smell of tar and nicotine with you.

Actually, 22C isn't all that warm, come to think of it. It's only about 71F, so that's not very warm at all. It's not like a heatwave.

The garbage men have been here, so that Monday morning ritual has been taken care off. They sure make a lot of noise early in the morning, but other than that they work quick and efficient. I hope they get paid well, because there must be nothing worse than dealing with trash all day long and than smelling it while dangling off the back of the truck all the time, especially when it's hot and the trash smells rancid.

On that socialist note I'm off to take a shower. I will walk Tyke first and breathe in the early morning air. It looks like it will be dry for a while yet.

Have a good day!

Ciao,
Nora

Wednesday evening.

Well, here I am again. As faithful as the sunset every day. I rarely let a day go by without posting, do I? It's an ingrained habit that is hard to shed and I wouldn't very quickly give it up, unless I felt pretty bad, and I don't now. There are moments in the day that I do, but they are moments and not long periods. Little mini funks.

I hardly slept last night. After initially falling asleep on the sofa, I woke up again around midnight and stayed up until 4 AM, not realizing that I had forgotten to take my medicines until much later than usual. That was part of the problem. I was also a little bit wound up about the coming day, because I was going to ergo therapy and I had something to share there.

The alarm clock woke me up at 7 AM with much reluctance on my part, because I was trying very hard to ignore it, but it just kept on beeping and it wouldn't stop. I took my sweet old time to drink my coffee and have my cigarettes, about 45 minutes and then I had to rush to get ready. I did everything in a hurry, as far as that was possible, but I can't rush the dog when I take him out. He doesn't do his business on command, so I have to be patient.

Just as I was getting ready to leave, my very old neighbors asked me to set their digital thermostat for them, because they still have not figured out how it works and various family members come and mess around with it. This time it was turned down to 10 degrees Celsius. What are these people thinking? I showed them how it works and hope they understand it now, but I don't think so.

I got to ergo therapy on time to have a cup of espresso in the smoking room and be early morning moody with everybody else. Some days are just like that and I am not much of a talker anyway, so that doesn't stimulate things either. I should have a good joke to tell.

At ergo therapy I immediately took the opportunity to say how much it bothered me to be told that my time was going to be up without being told when and that it spoiled all my pleasure of coming there and that I would rather know a date than be left dangling in the unknown like this. The therapist tried to play the ball back into my court by asking me why that made me so insecure, but I insisted on not being told anymore that my time was running out without being told a date, because otherwise I was just going to quit.

I told her, that the next time we have an evaluation in May, with my SPN, we could discuss it and then pick an ending date if we all decided that my time was up and that was all I wanted to hear about it. Luckily, I got support from the group, none of whom wanted to be told that their time was running out.

I think I have made myself clear enough now and I realize that I am the victim of the government's cutbacks who want all people in short term treatments that are supposed to last 6 months and then whatever ails them is supposed to be cured, whether or not that is true. It's a new policy, whereas before people could take all the time they needed. Two years if they wanted to. Now, out you go into the real world, ready or not, and you can't come back until another six months have gone by, should you need to, and go on a waiting list first.

This present government is one of the worst we've had when it comes to taking the care out of care and privatizing medical institutions, amongst other things. And we're finding out that there is a lot of mismanagement and that top salaries and big bonuses are paid to people who fail at their jobs as caretakers and managers. It's a big scandal and we're only seeing the tip of the iceberg. I'm all for turning things around the way they were and as quickly as possible. Well, I don't have to tell you that. Some things don't belong in the free market. Hey, I'm a Western European socialist.

Anyway, this socialist went shopping at the yuppie supermarket this afternoon, but I shop there because it is close to my house and they have the largest variety of products. I do want choice when I shop and if I have to pay 5 cents more, I don't really care. I can't get the dog and cat food I want at the other supermarket, nor can I find the milk that I want. There are cheap supermarkets where you can shop, but I am not going to nickel and dime everything to death and ride my bike all over the place. My shopping list is too simple for that.

I have the Überhund's diet all figured out now. He gets Butcher's in the morning, which is all natural meat and in the evening he gets a small bowl of little chunks of Frolic. He likes eating them, because he enjoys chewing them. He sort of slurps them up like an elephant would slurp up a dish of water. He vacuums them out of his dish and likes them.

He is so funny when he starts to eat, because he stares at the dish and then at me and then at the dish again, as if he tries to figure out if I'm playing a joke on him. He starts to eat very nonchalantly, as if he really doesn't care, but soon his taste buds open wide and all the food disappears. It makes me very happy to see him enjoy his food. It means I bought the right stuff. Now I just need to see some weight loss.

I don't think his eye is ever going to be okay again. I am applying the ointment and it isn't getting worse, but I see no real improvement. I lifted his eye lid and had a real good look tonight and it is still red and swollen. It's like we say here, mopping the floors with the faucet turned on.

Well now, I suppose that's it for me for tonight. I am going to get comfortable and lazy and watch TV.

Have a good evening everyone. I feel sleep overtaking me.

Ciao...