The penultimate post - NaBloPoMo as therapy

This posting every day business is hard. I hesitated to sign up for NaBloPoMo this year because I haven't been terribly well in the mental health department lately. I'm on anti-depressants and they are helping but I still feel quite fragile and don't have as many spoons as I'd like to spread around. When I'm down I tend not to post as much, my commenting on other people's blogs dries up and eventually my tweet rate slows as well (that's the last to go, 140 characters I can usually manage). I also stop reading books.

Back in August I set myself a goal of posting a decluttering story every day in the hope that it would a) get the house cleaned up and b) bootstrap me out of the depression by forcing me to engage online. A fake it till you make it ploy. The house did get a bit more organised and I did post most days in August, but in September and October with 3 and 6 posts respectively I was right back to hibernating again. The things I had hoped we'd achieve by the end of September are almost all done, a mere 2 months late, but the house doesn't look even a little bit tidy. Moving rooms full of stuff around creates chaos, I'm going to have to start the decluttering and tidying process all over again once we have everything settled in place.

I rather suspect that without the impetus of NaBloPoMo I'd not have been engaging with people online very much at all this last month, it's been a difficult time even without the depression. I'm glad that I was motivated to post about my visiting my Grandma and saying goodbye to her and that I was able to share the story of her life. I've enjoyed looking through old photos and I've even written a few posts that I'm quite proud of: my thoughts on turning 40, the one about swimming and my sentimental tea post.

I love being part of the little corner of the blogging and tweeting community that I've settled in, that there are so many people out there who are full of love and acceptance and caring for others, with whom I can share stupid geeky jokes and from whom I can learn so much and who are so supportive and understanding. It takes a certain amount of effort to reach out and engage and sometimes I don't feel able to do that, but the benefit I get from making that effort is huge. So I'm glad I drove myself to do it this month, even though I didn't feel like it, thank you NaBoPoMo for not letting me give up and an even bigger thank you to everyone who has read my posts, left a comment or chatted with me on Twitter - you're all awesome.

Now I just have to figure out how I'm going to keep myself going through December...

50 Things post No. 45

Asking for help

This morning I went with my Mum to see the counsellor that she'd seen a few times when things had got a bit too much after she and my Dad parted company. We made the appointment a couple of months ago at a point when I was feeling very concerned about David, worried about my dad and Adam's mum and had begun to feel very much like I had when Tom was very young and Adam had been traveling every second week and I had ended up on anti-depressants for a while.

I'm a little less immediately worried about David at the moment, but everything else is pretty much unchanged and my mood has truly sucked of late. I've felt stuck. Unreasonably teary. Easily angered. Disconnected. Unable to cope with stresses that I would normally take in my stride. I look at my life and think "My life? It's pretty damn good really. So why do I feel so fucking awful?!" I don't think I've been much fun to live with recently, either for Adam or the kids. I do a lot of apologising for my state of mind. Definitely time to ask for some help.

So I came away from the appointment this morning with a recommendation for someone to take David to see for help with his anxiety, a whole bunch of useful ideas for managing Adam's mum's alcoholism and dementia issues, a request for a nice long list of blood tests for myself to take along to the pathologist, a script for the same anti-depressants that I'd had before (and had done the trick before) and a further appointment for myself with another psychiatrist in the same practice. (Sadly I can't keep seeing Mum's doctor, who was OMG just wonderful, because she's winding down her private practice.)

Mum and I then went to Open Day at the school. We were too late to see Tom playing his flute in the band because we went over-time at the doctor's but we saw Caitlin in the Senior Dance group and in the Choir. Classrooms were visited, lunch was eaten, library books were donated. Then, because we also hadn't had time on the way back from the doctor's to drop by my house for me to pick up my car, and Mum had left early to meet up with friends, the kids and I walked home in the sunshine. Which was nice.

Tonight I cooked a rather awesome even-if-I-do-say-so-myself Thai red chicken curry for dinner and Adam asked if I wanted to open a bottle of wine. One of the reasons I don't usually drink during the week is that when I'm tired all it takes is a glass or two to leave me feeling very woozy indeed and once that happens you can kiss goodbye any hope of me doing anything useful. So I felt I needed some outside input into the decision making process:

My tweeps are enablers:

I forgot to take a before picture, and I'd like to point out that Adam helped with the cellar decluttering, here's the almost after pic:

While I was finishing off that particular decluttering task Adam was downstairs helping Caitlin clean up her room. There are no before pics of that either so it may not be obvious from these shots that anything was achieved at all. But perhaps if I tell you I haven't actually seen that carpet in many weeks you'll have some idea.

Tomorrow, vacuuming!

Friday fragments

Hosted by Mrs4444.

Whenever I come to write a Friday Fragments post I am reminded that it would be a very good idea to have a draft open all week and pop all the little bits and pieces of the week straight in there to be ready for sharing with the world at the end of the week. And then I remember that all those little bits and pieces are being loosed into the intertubes as they happen in the form of my tweets. But tweets are so ephemeral, they appear in people's twitter feeds, scroll down the page and are gone. So I feel totally justified in reproducing the content of them here - with bonus elaboration of course!

Things that made me tweet this week:

1. Adam found this in the garage

It's the exoskeleton of a huntsman spider - it's what is left behind when one moults in order to get bigger. I prefer not to think about the gap under the door between the garage and the hall outside our bedroom.

****

2. Stripey socks. There was talk on my twitter feed of stripey socks and the need for shoes and clothing that would adequately show off the wonderousness of stripey socks. Or indeed any other kind of socks of awesomeness. And then someone mentioned Fluevog shoes and before I know it I'm coveting a pair of these.


And I don't do shoes, especially ones with heels. But I might have to now.

****

3. On Monday morning I was at a cafe in Galleries Victoria drinking coffee when a choir appeared on the mezzanine level and started singing. I duly videoed their performance and afterwards went up to the conductor, said nice things about the singing and asked if he was ok with me putting the video on youtube and what the name of the choir was. Turned out they were a choir from St Columba Anglican School in Port Macquarie. When I'd made a note of that and written down someone's email to send a link to, the announcement of "You're going to be on youtube" was greeted by cheering :-) And so they are.

****

4. I then met up with the completely awesome Emma who arrived from New Zealand on Monday morning and the rest of my tweets for the day went like this:

• OMG I'm melting! Have been walking round city. Stopping for lunch now.
  We had caught the monorail to the Entertainment Centre carpark, a taxi to Em's hotel, then walked back to the monorail station, caught the monorail to Pitt St Mall and walked down the mall.


• I've just sat down in a cafe in Strand Arcade and a bloke walked past singing. This is getting weird. Lunch was a scrumptious BLT with an enormous amount of bacon and a Bundaberg ginger beer. Yum.
  


• Sitting on Manly warf waiting for ferry after having icecream & paddling in ocean. There's a Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream place at Manly now, and they have free internets! So we clearly had to go there. Then we took off our shoes and socks and paddled! See, proof:
  
  
  
  
  
  


• Beer! We took a taxi to Chinatown and eventually ended up in a blissfully air-conditioned pub while we waited for Adam to arrive with the kids so we could...
  


• Finished the day with dinner at the Marigold in Chinatown. I am knackered but it was totally worth it - fabulous day with the lovely Emma :)
  

****

5. I may have ranted slightly about P&C stuff, but that stuff gets no elaboration. I also may have mentioned all the work I was doing on the P&C blog because it's horribly lonely on a blog with no visitors. Happily the school community is slowly discovering it and lots of people have said nice things to me about it. When they look slightly awed by the hours I've spent on it I tell them it's partly about me teaching myself Wordpress blogging stuff and other things and that I'm quite happy to donate my time in that way because I'm getting something out of it too.

And there were way too many uses of the word "it" in that paragraph. But I can't be bothered rephrasing.

****

6. Wednesday afternoon was shaping up to be a bit of a logistical nightmare but my mother was awesome again: "My mother turned up to play kid-taxi driver thus turning my extremely stressful afternoon into a perfectly manageable one. I luffs her."

****

7. By Thursday night I was a little worse for wear: "I'm too shattered to even muster an arrrgh! of frustration tonight. All I've got is a whimper. *whimpers*" I am seriously looking forward to this time next month, when I will no longer be the P&C President and Things^TM will become Somebody Else's Problem. It's been satisfying and I feel pretty good about what I've done over the last 2 years but I've also had enough and it's time to move on.

****

8. Adam has been brewing, we have homemade ginger beer in the fridge and there is a bottle of mead brewing in my lounge room.

This is the first time he's done mead, it'll be interesting to see how it turns out!

And there you have it, my week in tweets. Apologies to those who'd been along for the ride the first time 'round, if you've read this far!

Now you can all head on over to Half-Past Kissin' Time and check out the rest of the Friday Fragmenters.

500th post, dedicated to TWOMF

Just by chance I happened to notice that my next post was going to be my 500th post. I tweeted the revelation, as one does, and pondered upon just what subject matter could be worthy of such a meaningless milestone.

Then PZ Meyers pointed me in the direction of a missive from the future. I watched, was highly amused (and most disconcerted at about the 3 minute mark) and simply had to share it right now.


Click here if you can't see the embedded video.

And there you have it, the reason my 500th post is dedicated to TWOMF.

P.S. Here it is in situ on Stephen Fry's website.

Pride and Twitterverse

I've twittered a link to this already (as is only right) but just in case any of you manage to miss that either on Twitter or Facebook I feel it is imperative that I share this thing of beauty here on my blog as well.

Thanks to a link in Tigtog's regular feature Femmostroppo Reader I found my way to Under the Mad Hat where I have been privileged to read her creation entitled Pride and Twitterverse.

Some favourite snippets:

MrsB:
A Mr Bingley--worth 50,000 followers a year--has joined Twitter! He's brought a friend, Mr Darcy--worth 100,000 followers a year! Pls RT

....

LizzyB:
@CharlotteL Of course. I’ll even visit you on Facebook but promise me I won’t have to read Mr Collins’ blog.

....

LizzyB:
Am taking a social networking webinar paid for by my Aunt & Uncle. Hope to learn lots.

LizzyB:
@JaneB Get this! We have to review Darcy’s blog. He has the most beautiful template I’ve ever seen.

Go, read the whole thing!

Twitterable recipes

In a moment of silliness last night I challenged my fellow Twits to produce recipes that could be squished in to 140 characters (well, 133 actually, given that we're hash-tagging them #recipe).

So far we have:
From me:

• mimbles: Wrap pork fillet w/ proscuitto, put on bed of sliced red apple & onion, drizzle w/ olive oil, season with black pepper & sage, bake #recipe
  7 minutes ago from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet
• mimbles: Brown 500g mince , 1 onion chopped + garlic - lots; add 800g tinned tomatoes, basil & oregano, 40g tomato paste, serve w/ pasta #recipe
  about 23 hours ago from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet
• mimbles: Core apple, fill w/ sultanas, honey, butter. Wrap in foil. Bake till apple is soft. Top with cream/ice cream. #recipe
  about 23 hours ago from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet
• mimbles: 2c s.r. flour, 1 pinch salt, rub in 2 tblspn butter, add 1 cup milk, knead gently, cut in rounds, brush w/ milk, bake 220°C ~ 10 min #recipe
  about 23 hours ago from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet

From Ariane:

0 more results since you started searching. Refresh to see them.

• shonias: Wrap fish fillet in proscuitto, wrap all in puff pastry. Bake 200C til pastry is brown. #recipe
  9 minutes ago from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet
• shonias: Sliced tomato, basil leaves, sliced bocconcini. Lay out tomato, then basil then bocc. Drizzle with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. #recipe
  about 10 hours ago from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet
• shonias: Watermelon, rockmelon, honeydew - balled. White onion finely sliced. Mix onion and melons for a few hours. Add cream before serving. #recipe
  about 12 hours ago from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet
• mimbles: RT @shonias: 1/2c butter 1c br sugar 1c coconut 2c oats. Melt butter. Mix with all. Press in tin. Cook 20min at 180. Cut while hot. #recipe
  about 23 hours ago from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet

And from Zuckerbaby:

• ZuckerBaby: Cook spaghetti. Melt marg, olive oil, add minced garlic & chilli, saute, toss with spaghetti & some pasta water, add salt, pepper. #recipe
  about 23 hours ago from web · Reply · View Tweet
• ZuckerBaby: Peel oranges, slice into rings, alternate with marg & brown sugar. Wrap in foil. Bake til marg & butter melt. Pour over icecream. #recipe
  about 23 hours ago from web · Reply · View Tweet
• ZuckerBaby: 2 frozen bananas;1/4c soymilk;1/4tsp vanilla: mash til smooth;.5c choc;1TS marg;2TS maple syrup;1/4c soymilk: melt, pour on bananas #recipe
  about 23 hours ago from web · Reply · View Tweet
• ZuckerBaby: 3/4c marg;.5c icing sgr;1.5c flr;.5c crnflr;1/3c cocoa: form balls, squish, bake 140C; 1/3c marg;3/4 icing sgr;1/4c cocoa, mix, ice #recipe
  about 23 hours ago from web · Reply · View Tweet

Wonder how far we can go with this...