Untying the knots...

I'm waiting for the coffeemaker to finish spitting out the last drops of coffee so I can have a cup. I'm in need of some caffeine. I seem to be quite often lately and I don't know why I've developed this sudden urge to drink lots of cups of coffee. I just feel that it's the only way to keep my head straightened out. It's such a mess up there. It feels like there's a traffic jam taking place with several accidents and casualties. 

The dog is sitting beside me and is looking at me very urgently but he has been walked and he has kibbles in his bowl and a rawhide bone to chew on. The truth is that he's a little bit spoiled and probably wants something entirely different like an apple or a banana which I'm not going to give him. I'm just going to have to ignore him and maybe then he'll get the message. Not that I find this easy to do. 

I took a paracetamol earlier for my headache and the pain in my shoulders and neck which are all caused by stress. It's stopped working now and I really should have taken a anti-inflammatory pill which I have two left of. They work better and last longer. I suppose I should call the doctor's office and get a refill. I will take one of them now because it makes no sense to sit here and be in pain. 

The coffee tastes very good and I imagine that I'm starting to feel better but that could all be in my imagination. I have not taken a nap this afternoon because I slept through the night until a very decent time in the morning. That's almost unheard of. I did get up to go to the bathroom at some ungodly hour but I went straight back to bed and was instantly asleep again. That hasn't happened in a very long time.

The sky has been overcast almost all day but it's been very warm and it got up to 26 degrees Celsius. Now the sun is shining into the living room windows and making it warm in here too. It's very pleasant to sit here and be warm for a change. This is the hottest it has been all year so far. Tomorrow it will be a lot cooler again and it will rain. We don't have a very nce weekend ahead of us. 

The coffee has made me feel better and now I can think straight again. It's either that or because of the fact that I took my medicines a while ago. Sometimes it is hard to figure out why something changes and what is the magic ingredient. I can only do my best and try everything. The main thing is to try and stay as calm as possible under all circumstances. The one thing I must not do is to get rattled. 

I hope you're all having a good evening. 

Ciao,

Irene

Kindheartedness...

I suppose that's best to describe the benign feelings I have right now about the world  in general, though not about all things in specific, but I'll not let myself be bothered about them right now. I want to have nothing but benign feelings, pushing away the effects of the less happy news items I watched on television last night. If they are all true, they make me feel very jaded indeed and I want none of that right now. 

I do want to enjoy my few hours of peace and quiet in the darkness and silence of the night and believe in the general goodness of mankind, though it is hard to pull the wool over my own eyes. It requires a state of oblivion that even I don't know I'm capable of. I'm going to give it my best try, though. 

The face of one man is etched in my mind right now and that is the face of Dominic Strauss-Kahn and I wonder how he is doing in his single prison cell on Wicker Island. I want the allegations to not be true, but I'm afraid they are and I'm ever so sorry about that. It bothers me to no end that a man in his position would steep so low.  I suppose I feel an enormous amount of disappointment. This isn't about having extra-marital affairs anymore. This is about rape and it's very serious. 

Enough said about that. I have to find something equally true and honest in its place. Something to offset it. Something of beauty and elegance. That's hard to come by in this world. I suppose I'm looking for a hero and I can't find one at this moment. I need a Nelson Mandela.

I suppose that I don't feel as benign as I thought I did, though I wish to. I worry about men in power abusing their privilege. It's been shown that the brain activity of people in power changes and that they take bigger chances and do things ordinary people would not. They are risk takers. This goes for women in power as well as men. Women are more subtle, though. They don't have a penis in their pants with which they have to assert themselves. 

I'll gently return to the night and it's peacefulness. If I sit here so silently, it's hard to imagine that there's a big complicated world out there. I can make my own world as small as I like. I can make it as small as the light of my desk lamp reaches. I can forget about yesterday and the day that is to come. All I have to do in a while is go back to bed and sleep. I don't even have to dream about unpleasant things, at least, I hope not. 

On another subject, the book I'm reading, 'Loot and other stories,' is not fascinating me at all, but then again, not many books are lately and I never seem to be able to finish one. I will have to go in search of another book that will hopefully grab my attention well enough. I do still have enough to choose from on the bookcase. It's a shame to leave all these books unread, but maybe some day in the future I will go back and finish them.

Today actually brings nothing complicated with it. It is a day of no consequence at all. I can make it as simple as I want and I am grateful for that. I will do some simple chores and generally take care of my mental health, which has for the most part been good. I'm not going from one extreme mood to the other, but am mostly positioned somewhere in the middle range. You have no idea what a relief that is. I'm not in the bouncy castle.

I hope you're all having a good night and that you'll have a good morning when you get up. We're actually going to have good weather. 

Ciao,

Nora

In the quiet moments...

I've slept a good long time this morning and took a while to wake up in my armchair with several cups of coffee. It was a pleasant time out. I petted Tyke and found my equilibrium. It wasn't actually too far away. 

I have a day off and not much on the program, which is fine with me, because I don't feel all that ambitious today. All I want to do is have my peace of mind and hold on to it as much as I can. I have it right now, so I'm in good shape and don't want to lose it. I'm going to prevent myself from doing anything to let it slip away.

The best thing to do, is do everything as calmly and quietly as possible without being in a rush. Every move has to be thought out as well as possible ahead of time. There's to be no stress in my day and I want to keep things simple and unhurried. 

I'll make it a nurturing day and pretend I am under the wool with a minor ailment. Actually, my knee is bothering me quite a bit, so I could use that as an excuse. I got up with it feeling quite sore and is hasn't gotten better yet.

I want to enjoy the day as much as I can, but do it in a very peaceful way without the least amount of stress. It's going to be a mental health day. I have to be in a certain frame of mind to have one of those and I think I am today. That's why I'm still in my bathrobe and I'm planning to be for a while. 

Wednesday is usually a day on which I don't have too many chores. Not too many dishes have accumulated and the laundry has been done. Things get busier again by Friday, but for now I have some time off. 

I'm going to the hairdresser tomorrow. Yesterday I realized that my hair was too long and unmanageable. That seems to happen from one day to the other. You realize that you're spraying too much hairspray on it to keep it in place. It's a mess in the morning when I get up out of bed. There's not much shape to it and it looks quite funny. Flattened on one side and sticking up on the other. I look frightful. 

The sun is coming out and it's about time. It does make the world a little more cheerful. Things have been gray and gloomy. We're supposed to have a wintry shower this afternoon, that's how cold it is, but after that, the temperatures are going to improve. Hopefully, spring will be in the air from that point forward. 

Tyke wants to go for a walk, so I need to get dressed. It will be good to get some fresh air. 

Have a good day. 

Ciao,

Nora

Doo Wah Diddy...

I'm not quite awake yet, but pretending to be. I'm waiting for the coffee to get done and in the meantime, I'm having some milk. I tried to drink some juice, but my stomach violently protested and didn't want it. It was too acid, even the mild kind. I will not make that mistake again. 

I'm sure it has been the cause of the acid reflux I have been having at night. I had not put one and one together, but now I see the link. As a reaction to that, I have been sleeping on my back and not on my side anymore, because that seems to make it worse. It's as though things get squashed and my esophagus doesn't seem to like that.

I'm having my coffee now and a pleasure it is indeed. I expect to be fully functioning any minute. The coffee is mild too, because I don't make it as strong anymore, and I drink it with plenty of milk. It's not a cafe au lait, but it's getting close to it. It does make me burp, but nearly anything does nowadays, so that's nothing unusual. I think I have to invest in a bottle of Maalox. The pharmaceutical industry must be doing alright. It may be something to invest my precious money in. 

It was cold during the night, but I had the thermostat set low and the heater did not go on. It's still warm enough in the apartment, despite the cold outside. As a matter of fact, I was very warm under my duvet and woke up sweating, and on top of that, Tyke climbed  on my chest so I could hardly breath, but he saw it as a moment of complete togetherness. That's when I thought I had better get up. Gandhi was lying beside my head and things were getting a little bit too cozy. The animals do pick their opportune moments to show their love and affection. I've never had it so good.

When I got up, Tyke wanted to go outside, but I know he only wants to go hang out there and sniff around and not come back in for a long time, so I completely ignored him and he laid down on the sofa, slightly miffed. He and Gandhi are curled up together being peaceful now. I don't know how long my peace and quiet are going to last. 

Today is actually the day I'm going to see my SPN, it was not yesterday like I thought. I had the day wrong in my memory and had to check my agenda to find out. Probably it is better that I see her today, because yesterday was not such a successful day and I wasted a lot of it doing absolutely nothing but feel low and uneasy. It was one of those days in which I very much doubted my own capacity to make it through life successfully and when my belief in myself was very low. 

I suppose that everybody has days like that and that you just have to get through them in the best possible way and go to sleep and hope that the following day will be better. It proved to be right and I do feel better this morning and it is only with uneasiness that I look back at yesterday. It's such an awful thing to doubt your own mind and your capacity to think straight. 

All you have to do really is take the day off and not do anything important. Take a mental health day, like I would allow my kids to have when they were young and had a not so great day. That was a day to be relieved of your responsibilities and to get treated extra special. It's something you can do for yourself without feeling all sorts of guilt and remorse. I seem to have a problem with that, as if I need someone's permission to do it. Everybody needs a mental health day now and then. You do recuperate from them. 

I have more zest in life today and look forward to it. That means Tyke will get more of his regular walks and I will get out of my bathrobe quicker. All the things I worried about yesterday, I will not worry about today. Those were spooks in my head. 

The fact that I have very clean hair helps a lot too. And the fact that it is so very blond is another pleasant addition. It's probably getting more gray, but it seems like it is very blond. The gray hair is very finely sprinkled throughout and doesn't really show up. I don't have a thing to worry about yet and I'm going to let it all happen naturally. I'm not going to reach for the hair dye.

I have to get dressed now and walk Tyke in the cold morning air. It's 37F outside and foggy. Time for warm clothes. 

Have a good day!

Ciao,

Nora