Ramblings and Musings and Wibblings

After speaking to the pharmacist, I now know there's no prescribed optimal time to take my medication, so it's just personal preference. Some people do well with mornings, others with evenings. I want to try out mornings first as it will force me to have breakfast (not allowed to take this on an empty stomach) thus adding more structure to my day. It should also allow me to actually go to bed when I'm tired, not because medication or alcohol is making me drowsy.

To that end I took my pill at 10:00 and can definitely say side-effects are happening. I feel weak and wobbly and have no real appetite (but can tell when I'm supposed to be hungry). The headache's pretty much there all the time, but it's not so much made up of pain but of pressure, which is an interesting experience if nothing else.

Mood: Mostly blank. Feeling brainier, though. Spontaneously decided to cook two bean chilli, using up all the older veg in the fridge. I can see myself getting back into finishing the DIY chores that are left, possibly some constructive job hunting. Not actually done anything yet, but I have hope for the next few days.

After months of not feeling right, I went to the GP today to talk about my mental health state. He has now prescribed Fluoxetine (probably more commonly known as Prozac) which I'm to take for a month, at which point we'll review. If it works we'll continue. If it doesn't, we get to play medication roulette. Either way, we're looking at a minimum of 5-6 months on some form of anti-depressant. In the meantime, I'll also have at least one appointment with the mental health worker attached to the surgery to see if I can't find better coping mechanisms than drinking heavily.

Unsurprisingly, acknowledging I'm depressed and have created a drinking problem to cope with it has not put me in the best of moods, but I feel less lost.

And because Arwen's suggestion of keeping a mood journal makes excellent sense, I will tell you the following:

I took my first dose this afternoon at 14:00. My mood today: shitty. Mostly flat, with sad and upset being the only emotional highlights. (That's par for the course at the moment, so I at least have a base line to compare against...)

So I'm reading reviews for PSE timber (because that's totally a normal way to spend a Thursday evening^* and ran across this one: "i used this to build fitted wardrobes. when i got home and went to use it i descoverd the wood was twisted and curved therefor was not much use." I have to wonder how the fuck you don't notice that while you're in the store actually handling the wood.

...

No, no, it's fine. Just get it out of your system. I'll wait.

...

We good?

Good. As I was about to say, I generally find the reviews on DIY websites baffling. I don't expect professional level reviews at all (because hey, DIY), but I do like to see at least some glimmer of common sense and in the last two months I have seen entirely too many reviews where the reviewer gives a low score because they've lost sight of common sense or couldn't even see it using a telescope. I've seen such gems as:

- I used this plastic splashback behind my hob and it melted! - It specifically states it's an acrylic and should only be used as decoration in addition to the heat resistant version they also sell. That's why the decorative splashback is labelled not heat resistant.
- These cabinets won't fit against my kitchen wall! They're not straight! I want my money back! - I'm fairly certain your walls aren't straight. This is why you build wood frameworks, children!
- This colour paint does not go with my curtains! - They're called testers. Learn them. Love and squeeze them and call them George.
- The [really crappy 10p tiles I got on clearance] are already cracking! I wuz robbed! - You do get what you pay for, I'm afraid.
- I spent [obscene amount of money] on [really quite ostentatious] floor tiles. They're already cracking! How do I get my money back? - You neglected to mention you're laying tile straight on wooden floors. That's never going to end well. It even says so in all the instructions everywhere.

And the really egregious:

- I didn't get my 5 free gifts with this order. The girls in the office were really upset they didn't get their free [staplers/coffee mugs/tasers]. This company sucks! - It says during ordering that there's only one gift per order. On each page as well! Also, fuck you for using 'the girls' in your office to try and scam free shit from companies.
- [Product] did not [fart rainbows/scatter glitter/solve world hunger/make my shitty [insert noun here] look magically better] and is therefore horrible. - I wish to fire you from a cannon. Repeatedly. Until you're really sorry.
- [Product] is too expensive! I have never used [product] but [other product] is cheaper and clearly superior! Anyone who buys [product] is supporting the [insert random conspiracy theory here] - I have a hammer. Its name is Lars. Lars does not approve of these shenanigans and neither do I.
- I used [product designed for indoor use only] on my outside [wall/floor/dog/cat] and now it's [peeling off/cracking/oozing/dead]. This product is rubbish! - I loathe you and all you stand for. And give me all your remaining cats and dogs before you decide to experiment some more.

Apropos to nothing much, it looks like it will cost about £180 to completely replace the bathroom floorboards.

...why are you looking at me like that?

^* I'm not budgeting the bathroom floorboard replacement. Honest. Anyone who tells you differently is a lying liar that lies...)

Have new prescription of Singulair. Pharmacy let me know they will supply Singulair when it's on the prescription and will not swap out for a generic, so it's a mater of making sure my repeat prescriptions are correct. I will raise this with my doctor at my asthma check-up next month. For the moment I am very, very tired. I find it difficult to complete sentences when speaking (I just kind of trail off). I'm not hungry, I'm not sad, I'm not anything except tired. It's very frustrating, but at least I know I'll be better reasonably soon.

Still kind of sucks.

The walls and ceilings are finished, completed, Done! They have received their last coats and while some places need touch-ups, I'm leaving those to Alex, as I am likely to go Jackson Pollock were I required to do one more base coat. Still, they look fantastic and I keep patting the walls and going 'you did good' to myself^*. The wood panels have received their last coat, with the rest of the wood work requiring one more round of sanding and painting before I am happy to consider them Done. Hitting those milestones means I can move on to the side project of asbestos removal under the stairs (budget finished yesterday, action plan to be written tomorrow, sign off expected Thursday/Friday) and start putting together a preliminary budget for the bathroom renovation (soft budget approval expected Wednesday) and a preliminary budget for the kitchen project (this one scares me a lot).

After signing off on the hallway last Wednesday, I wandered around for a bit expecting a warm glow of accomplishment to envelop me. Oddly enough, the Job well Done, Thou Canst Have a Biscuit feeling didn't kick in until I'd spent another hour or two in my garden. I rescued a blue salvia (which I believed to be dead) from underneath the cat mint and whatever the hell that bunch of wildflowers is I sowed end of April, sowing Chantenay carrots, sage and catnip and planting another salvia (three died last year. I needed to replace at least one!), shaggy masterwort, a pink arabis, a yellow pacino poppy and a lithodora (these are not exactly natives, but naturalised and capable of carrying an acceptable amount of pollinator and butterfly bio mass). I also spent a while popping in and out of the garden introducing slugs and snails to the Jar O' Brief Slug Happiness.

On Thursday, we mostly relaxed and prepared for the weekend to before toddling off to spend the evening with Alex's mum (whose front garden looks fantastic and makes me want to sneak in at night with a bucket and shovel^**. It was mildly gratifying, if depressing, to see I am not the only one who's having issues with their morning glory looking kind of pale and spotty, though^***). She'd made opor ajam which was very tasty and so much a taste of my childhood food experience that I ended up babbling about differences and how the side dish could be improved to keep from pathetically blubbing into my rice and opor ajam. And then I got the recipe! This made me very happy.

The next morning, we picked up swaldman and drove to the far end of Belgium for a Gamesmeet. This involved about 30 people getting together in a large...mansion? Former hotel? Massive chatel? Big place? to play board games and hang out. The plan was to arrive around 18:00 on Friday, but due to traffic around Brussels, we didn't get there until after 20:00. Considering we got off the Chunnel around 15:00, this was...annoying. Still, friends, games and laughter made the trip worthwhile. Properly meeting yady for the first time was lovely. Saw the_ladylark after many months. Sadly we did not get to watch any Mark Watches (though I'm starting to catch up!) and I dropped out of the Game Of Thrones board game on Sunday due to lack of brain. It was also good to see sierra_le_oli, happydisciple and their now mobile daughter (amazing how much difference nearly three years makes).

Most importantly, I got to spend some quality time with arwen_lune. Never enough, of course (the world is perverse like that), and it always breaks my heart when we have to part ways. So, apologies to my previous and future travelling companions, but I kind of fall apart for a bit after I've had to say goodbye to her. Though this time, I got to go away with another amazing thing she knitted! It's beautiful and fits and makes me very happy and it just feels like we're slightly closer when I wear it (yeah, I'm sentimental. Fucking sue me). Plus it's well crafted (bonus!). There will be pictures eventually.

azekeil appears to have enjoyed himself, which is also important as I'd like him to get along with my friends. We left around 14:00 and got home around 22:00 (diverting only slightly to drop off swaldman) where both cats tried to convince us they had been cruelly mistreated and starved in our absence. Jazz especially insisted that he was traumatised beyond belief and needed to spend some time sitting on us before he calmed down.

I spent most of today recovering from whatever the bug is I managed to bring home from Belgium, so I've not been able to contine work on the house or mess around in the garden as much as I'd hoped. Still, the garden seems to be hopping and buzzing and generally doing well. The borage plants are about to bloom so there will be more polinator food soon. The polinators are currently all on the cat mint, which is covered in purple flowers and flops dramatically. I tried staking it last year and it et the stakes. So this year, I'm leaving it to do its thing. It may decide to eat us all in the night, but I can't bring myself to worry too much. It's covered in hoverflies, bees and bumblebees and thus I am ridiculously fond of it. I'm ridiculously fond of my entire tiny garden, actually. While I will one day live somewhere with a garden full of beds of flowering plants and vegetables and maybe even a proper English wildflower meadow (there could even be a hive of bees! I have such glorious dreams!), this one here is my first garden and as such, it's special.

Now if you'll excuse me, I think I need to count my bumblebees again...

^* Whosoever of my acquaintance feels the desire to point out the hallway couldn't look much worse, please remember I know where you live (or at least will easily be able to find out) and I will come over to widdle on your cat. If you don't have one, well, I'm just going to have to get creative, now won't I?
^** Considering she's over two hours drive away? Yyyeah, I think I'm a gardener...
^***I can hear you all sniggering at the back there. Stoppit.

Also known as: My Issues, Let Me Show You Them.

As my levels of cope increase (and the sunny weather continues), I keep having these small moments of realisation on how to handle myself as my brainweasels set up their permanent camp in the near bottomless well of 33 years of life and its attendant anxieties, bad memories and embarrassing gaffes.

Realisation 1: I can't stop them directly. In fact, attempting to stop them just means I'm shouting at myself in my own head, like an OAP standing at the edge of the duck pond shaking their cane and shouting at the gulls for stealing the ducks' bread crumbs. It's not productive because the gulls will come back as soon as the OAP stops shouting and waving their cane. Same goes for the brainweasels. I can shout at them and they just bob along the surface looking at me with fake innocence written all over them. As soon as I stop shouting, they'll continue to explore, occasionally poking back up to hoik up random memories which will then arrive in my conscious mind along with that familiar sick feeling of embarrassment.^*

Realisation 2: There's no point in throwing them back in. Doing that just encourages the brainweasels, because wheee, we have a new game and I'll get tired of throwing before they get tired of retrieving. They're like tiny little labradors with all the love replaced by spite and hatefulness.

Realisation 3: Shouting at myself or pushing away memories is unhelpful and unkind to myself. They're not coping mechanism, they're defence mechanisms and shitty ones at that. Because shouting at myself doesn't stop the brainweasels and it only makes me tired and dislike myself. Pushing away memories means they keep coming back as sharp as always and I end up mentally bleeding from a multitude of tiny little papercuts.

Realisation 4: I need coping mechanisms, or at least ways to stop myself from useless mental shouting.

Realisation 5: Might as well continue the anthropomorphisation of my self-esteem and self-image issues into brainweasels and actually engage in conversation. This ends up with the weird situation where I, with paint brush and paint can in hand in reality, am telling a particular smug-looking brainweasel that the nasty little treasure he dug up for my edification is in fact a memory from when I was nine and was trying to help collect chicken eggs. Sure, my help was detrimental and then there were suddenly chickens everywhere. Yes, I ran away, but so would you if a cockerel the size of a medium dog was trying to attack you. But you know, no-one but me ever shouted at me or made me feel bad about it afterwards. This was 24 years ago. We can let it go now, because I learnt my lesson the first time around^**. And then I made myself a cup of tea and told myself I did really well and to keep up the good work.

Realisation 6: I am allowed to be positive to and about myself. I can tell myself that I'm doing something really well or that I'm really good at some things. For example: I've made three really nice dinners in the last two weeks (the rest were just regular or take-out); I'm doing a really good job on the hallway; I'm making this house into a nice place to live. I am worthy of love and affection from myself. And to underscore that, I am going to go make myself a cup of tea and a pat on the back once I've posted this.

Realisation 7: This will be a work in progress and there are things lurking that I don't particularly want to look at, but hey ho. No-one ever goes through life without collecting a few dings and scratches and regrets.

^*Huh. I just realised it's nearly always embarrassment. Only a few angry or sad memories. How interesting. Something to ponder.

^**The lesson was 'don't trust chickens, they're evil little fuckers' and 'next time, lock them up before attempting to collect eggs', which I feel is still useful advice for a happy and healthy life.

So I spent most of the second half of 2012 being significantly depressed. Due to wonky brain chemistry, I am prone to depressive episodes anyway, but irregular sleeping patterns, sleep deprivation, stressful job and uncontrolled asthma helped push me into my worst one yet. I want to say that after I quit the job and got back into a regular sleeping pattern, I bounced straight back into normality (or what I considered to be normality), but it'd be a lie. I still spent most of my days in a grey fog of nothing much, but at least I had the spare spoons to be a more productive half of our relationship and to be more social overall.

It wasn't until the beginning of April that I really noticed a general increase in levels of cope. Six weeks and some change on, the difference is startling to me. I look back two, four, six months and more and not even the brainweasels can convince me that I am not a hell of a lot better today. Still, that doesn't mean my levels of cope have returned to normal. A bad night's sleep full of anxiety dreams will still empty my mental reservoir. I still sometimes wake up in the morning with my brain telling me I'm on my own for the day. And you know what? That's okay. I'm allowed to have bad days. It's entirely acceptable to take a brain vacation or a have a duvet day. It doesn't mean I'm sliding back down the slope, it just means I don't have to climb that day and can take a rest. I can do whatever I need to take care of myself.

And now I'm done thinking. I'm having a duvet day.

A couple of weeks ago, Loki got into a fight with another cat. We suspect it may have been Jazz, because Loki has a habit of pushing past Jazz' very obvious 'stop fucking with me now' signals until there's screaming and fur. Regardless of which cat he got into a scrap with, he ended up with what at that point just looked like scratches and a case of the insecure grumps (meaning he spent a few days being more affectionate and present than usual).

So far so good. About a week later we find out that actually, he has a suppurating hole on his head where he's obviously been bitten. So we clean it and keep a close eye on the rest of his scabs and scratches as well. All's fine until yesterday, when I notice he has a fresh looking scab on his bald spot and a lump. There's also a lump on his neck, which doesn't just feel like a large scab. He's also grumpy, unhappy and generally unwilling to be touched. When I insist on checking his lumps, he actually hisses and claws at me. Considering that's completely contrary to the easy going idiot I know and (mostly) love, I book an appointment for today.

This morning, his lump has at least doubled in size and he really doesn't want me to touch him at all. Roll on lunchtime today: we get to the vet and in the examination room, we have to extract a very sulky Loki by removing the lid of the carrier and prising him off the towel. All the normal preliminary stuff ensues, I explain the history and how he's Normally Not Like This, Officer, Honestly. Meanwhile, Loki's opting for the 'play dead' strategy and ready to make a run for it as soon as I relax my hold on him by even a fraction. This lasts up until the vet inspects the lump on his head, at which point the following ensues:

"Oh, yes, that looks abscessed. Let me see if I can remo...ah."
*busy silence*
"Well, that's emptied it. I'll go get him an antibiotics shot."

You see...when a head wound like that abscesses, there's a lot of pressure. Especially if it starts to swell at the rate that this one did (from 'hmm' to 'dude, are you smuggling quail eggs in there?'). So when the vet poked the scab, it pretty much went 'ptoing' and suddenly, there was pus. A surprising amount, just..fountaining up. It was fascinating in a nauseating kind of way.

Loki's now a lot happier (if not on speaking terms with me at the moment) but next time he has one of those wounds, he's going to the vet before he turns into a furry pus fountain again.

So I've booked the asbestos consultant for May 1st, which means I have slighty less than two weeks to get things tidied away in preparation for the imminent DIY Extravaganza. I have my plastic boxes and know what's going in them, but there's still an element of puzzling involved which is rather stressful to me. See, contrary to what you might believe, I don't actually like rearranging things more than once ^*. So when it goes into a plastic box (in this case our board and card games), I need to make sure it's done in the correct way first time 'round. Otherwise I'll lose things and that would be bad.

Especially considering we're going to be going to the Games Meet in two months, meaning I need to make sure the games we're bringing are to hand, which means a separate box because they're the large ones, but there's the smaller card games which need to go in a smaller box and there's all the Munchkin stuff which won't all quite fit with the other small stuff and before you know it I'm spinning around in tiny circles going 'fneegle!' and pondering giving everything away to charity and just living with one change of clothes and my computer ^**.

Of course, all of this will go flying out the window in a few days when I get the hang of this whole thing and realise it's all fluid at the moment. Boxes are going to be lugged around, unpacked and repacked as needed over the next months and my gloriously logical plans will crumble before the onslaught of reality.

Still: today's result: one plastic box with card games (and some of the Munchkin stuff, because I am confident people will bring that to the Games Meet) and...er, one box of old CDs and CD-ROMs to be thrown out and a looooot of cardboard and paper for recycling.

Tomorrow: important admin stuff and spending time with serena_lesley.

Monday: More Tidying!

Go me!

^* Except for my books. Or my cooking things. Possibly my DVDs.
^** And my e-reader. And my cooking things. And my gardening things. And...aagh!

So for my mum's *mumble* birthday trip, she wants to go to London with sis and me. There is no way in Great Squid's blue sea that we can actually do everything in three days, but a possible idea is to pick one thing we all want to do, and one thing we each personally want to do and then just add stuff as and when we feel like it. I am taking a laptop so we can keep things fluid.

Suggested things:

Visit Natural History, Science and A&V museum.
Visit Regent/Hyde Park.
Visit Camden.
Visit Oxford Street.
Go to Harrods.
See a show on the West End.
Zoomy boat on the Thames.
Open-top bus tour.
London duck-tour.
Any amount of palace tours.
Random walking about taking in the sights.
A London Walk (I'd love to go on a Jack the Ripper walk, but I am not sure my mum and sister deserve to be subjected to my getting all giddy over Victorian serial killers.)
Food!
See London Bridge.
See London Eye (gwaaah).
See Tower of London (dude, ravens!).
Covent Garden.
Piccadilly Circus.

I'm looking for further suggestions of stuff to do in London. Shops to visit, landmarks to see etc. I won't discard anything (unless it's hours away from London). It will all go onto the laptop to be reviewed when we're there.

So? Tacky horrible touristy things? Hidden gems? Wonderful touristy things? A shop/building/street that should absolutely be visited? Awesome hotels? Cheap but cheerful hotels? Any input will be appreciated.