Getting in the proper mood...

I took a tranquilizer a little while ago because I was in a not so good mood and I knew no other way to get over it. I'd already had two cups of coffee, but they didn't do the job and I didn't know what else would. Positive thinking didn't help. Besides, I've tried that for the past couple of days and it hasn't brought me much relief. No matter how I tried to change my attitude, it didn't get me very far. 

Taking a tranquilizer is against my own rules. I don't like to take them in the long run, but I do like the speedy relief they bring me. They give me quick relaxation when nothing else will. It's not the easy way out it seems because quite a struggle precedes it. I do try to do everything possible to get over my bad mood in an other way. Days of malcontent come first with much frustration. 

I think I need more happiness in my life, but I'm unable to obtain it myself right now. I don't have the wherewithal to go chase it. It's pretty illusive to me. I would like some brought to me from the outside just as a gift out of the blue, but I won't hold my breath waiting for it. I will have to gather up the energy and go look for it myself. That's what I need to work on. I think I'm slightly depressed. 

I'm drinking a tall glass of mild orange juice and I'm hoping that the sugar content will give me a natural high. I can never drink a beverage without hoping that it will have some sort of effect on me. That's the nature of the beast. The juice is made of mandarin oranges and it tastes very good. It's just the pick me up I needed.

This morning the new duvet I ordered was delivered. It is a hypoallergenic, four season one. That means they are two lightweight duvets snapped together. You can remove one in the summertime when it's hot.  Of course, I changed the bed and put it it on immediately. I even took a nap under it this afternoon. It was very comfortable and warm. My old duvet was getting a little worn because I've had it for a long time. I will wash it and save it as a spare. 

I watched cultural TV this morning, although I do have to say that I was not greatly inspired, but I can blame that on my mood. Probably the whole exercise was wasted on me. Art, music and literature were discussed and I did learn some new things, so I guess it wasn't a total flop.

The dog is waiting impatiently for me to take him out. He is very insistent that we go now. I suppose I'll have to obey him and get the show on the road. 

Have a good evening all of you.

Ciao,

Nora

Another one for the road...

You can't artificially create a highly charged mood, so I will have to do with this medium charged mood instead. I'm not plucking the last stars out of the heavenly skies and seeing as though it's nearly dawn now, I won't be anymore either, no matter how many cups of coffee I drink. The morning will start off quietly and not with a bang and I will not go roaring into it. That's probably for the best, as it results in less accidents. 

After having had the joy of watching the royal wedding yesterday, I get the fun of watching Queen's Day being celebrated on television today. This is when our Queen Beatrix honors the birthday of our old Queen Juliana. It's a regular people's party all over the country and all stops are pulled out. We all celebrate. It's when the flags and the orange bunting are pulled out and flown all over and we go orange mad in honor of the House of  Orange. It's our national color. Queen's Day is our first national celebration in the springtime. The next will be Liberation Day on May the 5th. 

Since today is Saturday, it is a day off already besides being a national holiday. It will be very busy downtown and that area is best avoided. The cafe terraces will be filled with people because the weather will be good.  There will be the usual tourists and, because it's also spring break, there will be large amounts. It would be a perfect day to get lost in the crowd, if you liked a crowd.

I have to remember to be happy today and to not sit here like a rock in a meadow, all stony and silent and morose. There's no reason for me not to see the sunny side of life. I have to look at the reality of the day and see the lightness in it and it is going to be a very light day indeed. Maybe that has not quite dawned on me yet. The day will be filled with simple things and there's nothing to worry about, except what to wear and at what time to walk the dog. That's as easy as it gets. 

I slept a good six hours last night and that's a long time for me. I was pleasantly surprised when I looked at the alarm clock this morning. Still, I'm yawning right now, so I'm not fully awake yet. I must go and get dressed and take the dog out in the cool morning air and get woken up properly. There's a bit of wind that ought to blow the cobwebs from my mind. 

At this point the dog seems to have the same idea and has come up to me with big begging eyes. I think he's ready to go out. It's completely light outside now and the sun is shining.

I hope you'll all have a good day.

Ciao,

Nora

Make a story out of it...

I hope that the cup of coffee I'm drinking is quickly going to put me in a more cheerful mood. If not this one, then the one I'm going to drink after it. I am a bit down in the dumps and I've been trying in various ways to feel better, but they haven't made a difference yet. I wish I had a magic pill that I could take to cheer me up, but I know that such thing does not exist, although I used to think so. Now I'm counting on the coffee. 

I didn't start the day out too bad. I was a bit slow this morning and I took my time waking up in my armchair with several cups of coffee and my inevitable cigarettes. Once I had my head together after a long enough time, I took a shower and got dressed and walked Tyke. I seemed to function alright, but after that, I've been going downhill and my mood has not improved yet.

I did do the chores that needed to get done. I hadn't changed the bed last night like I had planned and I did that today and did a load of laundry. I've got a nice clean bed to look forward to tonight. That ought to cheer me up a bit, but that's nice for later when I've got my pajamas on. I've got to think about this moment and try to make a difference. I don't want to sit here like a bump on a log and be downhearted. I've got to find something to be a bit happy about right now. 

Maybe the last reduction of my anti-depressives has caught up with me and that is making me have a down day. Usually those reductions take a couple of days for your body to react to. The amount of medication in your body doesn't drop down to the new level until a few days after you've cut back. It's been four days since I reduced it. That could account for it and I may be okay again by tomorrow. There's no reason to get worried anyway. 

I heard somewhere that last night was a full moon. That would explain why I couldn't get to sleep right away. I never keep track of these things as I'm completely unaware of the moon in the night sky. I never know what phase it is in. I'm a typical city dweller when it comes to something like that. After the fact, I do always seem to be affected by the full moon and I should keep better track of it. It would explain my lunatic moments.

There's no sunshine today to cheer me up. It's completely overcast and cold. It isn't much fun to go for walks now and Tyke only gets short ones. We're expecting rain tonight and tomorrow we're even supposed to have wintry showers. I guess I was prematurely excited about the springtime. I am wearing cheerful clothes because of it. I thought I had to make the best of a gloomy day. 

The coffee hasn't helped much and I'm going to stop drinking it and switch to cold milk. I better stop having high expectations of today and strike this one up to experience. You can't have good days all the time. That would be too much to ask for. I suppose it's in human nature to have the odd day when things don't go all that great for whatever reason and I guess it keeps you humble in case you get a big head. 

I hope you're all having a good day. 

Ciao,

Nora

Slowly but surely...

My coffee tastes very good this morning and I can't get enough of it. It is making me as perky as a butterfly on a sunny spring day. Well, you can see where my thoughts are. They are certainly not stuck in the wintertime. They long for another season. Because it's January I do dare to long for the springtime. I look forward to it as something that's going to happen in the not too unforeseeable future. I am an optimist, no matter what the weather is still going to bring us. Which will be rain this weekend and that is a heck of a lot better than snow or sleet. 

I even dared sleep with my bedroom window open last night. That's because it really wasn't that cold outside. Cold is all very relative. It just depends on what you've gotten used to. It's no longer freezing, so any kind of temperature is nice. It feels healthier to sleep with the window open, all that fresh air must be good for something. I imagine it's better for my braincells. I will have better dreams because of it, though I don't really remember the ones I had last night. They must not have been that impressive.

I ate carrots and peas for dinner last night and they were so good that I ate my fill of them. I was truly full when I had to stop eating and I had to give the last of the carrots to Tyke who devoured them with a lot of appetite. I had forgotten how much fun it was to eat a big spoonful of peas. To really stuff your mouth with them and slowly chew them. It was heavenly. I have more left for tonight and it's something to look forward to. It's the little pleasures in life that make it fun. Peas and carrots can make you very happy. 

I watched a Dutch police series and it was as bad as they always are. A lot of drama and action and very little substance. I don't know why I bother, except that this one is filmed locally so it is interesting to see all the familiar places. The only problem is that nobody in the series speaks with a local accent, because they all come from the west of the country and that does make it lose some of its credibility. I don't know if that holds true for British series as well. 

I didn't go to bed too late last night. There was nothing else on television that I wanted to watch, as is usual for Friday nights. I can't get excited about many of the programs that are on, but that's why the television has an off button. I won't sit there and mindlessly watch whatever is on. I'm not hooked on it. 

Today is Saturday and the first official day of the weekend, although it really started yesterday afternoon after the domestic help left. I'm looking forward to the lazy days that are ahead of me. I will hang out in my bathrobe for a while this morning and be slow to get the show on the road. There is no time clock to punch and nobody will show up here. I get to have my privacy all to myself. 

There will be speed skating on today and I will watch that. Our best skater is not competing, so now it's up to the other guys. They will get a chance to prove their worth. They're up against some tough competition. They're skating the 10K today and that's a tough race. I'm curious to see how well we will do. It will be a relaxing way to spend the afternoon, for me at any rate. Not for them.

Have a good day!

Ciao,

Nora

Another day like this, please...

I tell the story in sequences on different blogs and to keep it straight for you, I suggest you go here to enjoy this part of it, though it isn't absolutely necessary, but you'd do me a big favor with it if you did. I'm also comment hungry, but that's a secret that you won't tell anyone, will you? 

I'm sitting here with a lovely cup of coffee and my cigarettes and life almost couldn't get better than this, although if I use my imagination I can think of a few other things that I'd also like a lot. All of them involve a lot of money and foreign travel and expensive hotels with room service. Yes, I do have rich tastes and should have been a capitalist and power hungry and ruthless. 

Alas, it's not in my nature to be that way myself, nor was I savvy enough to marry someone like it. I couldn't stand to be married to someone like Bill Gates and I doubt he could stand to be married to me, because I would tell him what to do with his money. I would do sensible money management and since I'm a socialist, there would be a lot of sharing of the wealth. I wouldn't just build a factory in Africa, I would build a village with an infra structure, so no shanty town would develop where people would have to live in indignity while they worked in my factory. I'm sure a lot of that is going on wherever big companies set up business.

I'll get off my soapbox, but you know where I stand on these things. If there's one thing I can't stand, it's the abuse of cheap labor and dire living circumstances for anyone. I count my blessings every day. I know how lucky I am. 

My meeting with my personal helper and my SPN went well, even though I had been nervous about it at first and was worried about how well they would get on and if there would be any friction with both of them having an interest in me, but coming from two different points of view. I need not have worried at all and we had a good and enlightening talk that was clear for everybody and that was not at all stressful or difficult. My SPN handles these things so well and I'm always impressed with her professionalism, even though she is relatively young. She doesn't have an enormous ego that gets in the way of her.

I think my personal helper feels reassured now too, because a lot has been made clear to her and she understand things better now. She got a good look inside the kitchen, sort to say. It's a great relief to me that this talk has taken place and that more talks can happen in the future if there is a need. Now both sides know what's involved and know each other. 

That's boring talk and I refuse to write about it more. I'm not in the mood for it. I want to write about different things altogether. About how incredibly nice this day is turning out to be and how happy I am to be alive and how well I feel about myself right now. I wish I could hold on to this feeling always and put it in a box to take it out for use whenever it was necessary. There should be a place where you can store spare happiness, although it is nice to be overwhelmed by it all at once. That and a 50 Euro bill can make your day. 

I have the heater turned up a little high because I was shivering although it really wasn't that cold in here. If it had been this temperature in the summer, I would have thought it was nice. Now I thought it was too chilly. There must be a draft. This morning I discovered that the domestic help had left open the bedroom window yesterday. I was wondering why it was so cold in the bedroom, but I didn't notice it behind the closed shade. Her logic escapes me. She also likes to rearrange my objects as if she's playing house and I regularly have to put things back where they belong. I do think it's kind of endearing, though. She does care enough, although she likes to put everything at an angle as if that is more artistic. She would have done well in the Baroque Age.  I put everything back straight. 

Tyke is having a good old snore. He doesn't realize that it's about time for a walk. He's too busy sleeping. It's okay with me, because I'm not exactly looking forward to going out in the cold, even though I do have that very nice scarf to wrap around my throat. The rest of me is cold, no matter how many clothes I wear. It's really going to be a problem this winter on how I'm going to manage to stay warm. I've turned into a real wimp when it comes to going out in the cold. I do so appreciate my warm apartment and the warm duvet when I go to sleep at night. As a matter of fact, I still want to get an extra cover for my bed, because I'm so cold when I first get in it. I keep my socks on. I wish I had one of my grandmother's crocheted bedspreads now. 

Tyke is awake and telling me it's time to go out. He's barking at me even, because I'm not doing what he wants. That is, get up out of this chair and put my coat on. I suppose I better go do that then. He's a bossy little dog. No manners whatsoever. Somebody didn't raise him right. 

Have a good evening!

Ciao,
Nora

Feeling much better now.

I was complaining in an earlier post that I was feeling wound up and obsessed, but after my medication started to work and I had two cups of coffee, I feel a lot better and I'm sure it is the combination of both that has saved me. I had not had any coffee since earlier in the day and I'm sure my body and mind were just in need of some, because I seem to thrive on it when it comes to my emotional well being. The medication was very welcome too and it calmed me down and made me feel serene.

Sometimes my mind is like a leaf tumbling in the wind and I don't know from one hour to the next how I will feel and I can go from despair to happiness in a short amount of time. They are very opposite states of mind that I fall victim to. I can be totally alright or completely not alright within the shortest amount of time without anything changing around me. It is an internal process that I hardly understand myself. I am very grateful when everything falls into place again and I feel what I assume is normal. I'm sure there is some ultra rapid cycling going on.

I was ready to go to bed a while ago because I felt so miserable, but now I'm more than able to stay up, even though I've got my pajamas on and my bathrobe. It's still early in the evening and there's no need for me to go to bed already. It is Saturday night, after all, and I am allowed a late night. I should be out in a café drinking beers with my buddies, but I don't have any of those and besides, I would get awfully drunk and not be able to make my way home. I can't see myself riding my bike home at night in an inebriated state. 

I keep running my hands through my newly cut hair and no matter what I do, it falls back into place the way it's supposed to. It's going to be the easiest hair to take care of. I'm looking forward to waking up with it and seeing how well it stayed in shape. Of course, it's going to be so easy to wash. All I have to do is stick my head under the faucet and shampoo it and rub it dry with a towel and it falls into shape automatically. It's a completely natural haircut. I could wash it three times a day if I wanted and I wouldn't have to worry about getting it into the right style.

Because the weather has cooled off considerably, I have to think of some different clothes to wear. I will have to start wearing layers again and I will have a good look in my closet and see what is there to choose from. It's something I look forward to, because I like combining clothes. I don't just like to put on a sweater, but prefer to wear several layers on top of each other that each show beneath the other. I've washed and ironed almost all of my clothes and there is a large selection. I've been wearing my denim skirts again with leggings and boots and it's fun to find tops to go with them. Each autumn I rediscover my clothes and the combinations I can make with them. It's time to be wearing scarves again too. I like to combine my clothes with scarves and I have a small collection to choose from, but one of them is my favorite and it is a green one and goes with a lot of my clothes and I always feel that when my neck is warm, the rest of me is warm too.

I have those really nice suede boots from Esprit and I have treated them against the rain and dirt, but I still won't wear them when it's raining outside. I just don't want to take the chance. I can wear my cowboy boots when it's raining and save the suede boots for dry days. I also have a pair of ankle boots, but I don't think they are going to have a long life. They were cheap and not really made for inclement weather. They are more for show than anything. I will wear them out in no time and have to toss them and have to buy a new pair. I will just have to spend some more money the next time and get a better pair. I do love to wear boots and like them better than shoes, so I'm always happy when the weather permits me to wear them. 

I have a collection of handbags too, but I always end up using the same one, although I do change them on occasion when I think I ought to give the other bags a chance. The one that I always use has the perfect shoulder strap and the perfect compartments to put all my belongings in, although it is not the most attractive handbag that I have. I have some that are much prettier, but they aren't as practical. In some of them, everything gets lost and I spend valuable time looking for my keys or mobile phone. Others don't have a shoulder strap and you have to hold them by the hand and that is such a bother, because if you do try to hang them on your shoulder, they always slide off. Then I have one that is like a backpack and it is really cute, but you always have to get it off your back if you want to get into it and the straps get in the way. So, it's always back to that old stand by, the practical black bag with all the handy compartments. One day I ought to go shopping and find a really good one that I can use for variety. 

You can tell that right now I'm really into clothes and accessories. For some reason that seems to be very important to me right now. Maybe it's because I got a haircut and I feel a little bit like a new woman. Maybe it is just because right now, this moment, I feel good and can concentrate on those things. Sometimes it's good to refocus your energy on the basics of who you are and I am very much my clothes and how well I care for myself. When I am depressed, I don't care about these things so much, so it's with renewed vigor that I do when I feel good.  

I do have to keep an eye on that ultra rapid cycling that I seem to be doing. I'm bouncing off the walls sometimes. I switch moods like a commuter switches trains and all this time I'm trying to find the magic formula to set everything right, while I have no idea what I'm doing half of the time. It's overtaking me like rapidly moving traffic on the highway. I must be very aware. I wish I had an early warning system. Like sirens going off.

My orange juice is all gone and now I'm drinking lemonade, which is very good too. I can drink many glasses of that, but there are a lot of calories in it. It's a great thirst quencher, but very sweet. I'm trying to avoid drinking all the milk, because I have to make it last until Tuesday when the Exfactor will do the groceries. I can't drink water from the faucet, because it reminds me of the time when I was four years old and an older girl tried to drown me. I swallowed a lot of water then. My dislike of water from the faucet has only grown over the years, as do many of those quirks. 

I'm in the mood for an ice cream sundae. It's a shame that it's the wrong time of the day for one. When it's a certain time of the night, cravings can really hit you. I don't get those longings during the day when I could go to the store to do something about it. I always get them when it is impossible, because we don't have a supermarket that's open 24/7. When I lived in California, we would go to the store at night and get whatever we had a craving for. Not that we abused the privilege, but it was nice that we could. I feel that I live a much less spoiled life here.

Tyke's curled up in the red armchair. He thinks it's time to call it a night and he is right, usually I'm in bed by this time. Gandhi is sound asleep in my armchair. It is kind of cozy with both animals asleep and me sitting here by the light of the desk lamp. I can do this for hours more to come, because I'm not in the least bit tired. I always say that just before I'm about to go to bed.   

I will end this now, because it's gotten long enough. I will think about going to bed, though I don't know how I'm going to manage. It may turn into a very late night. 

Sleep tight if it is that time for you. 

Ciao,
Nora