Jan

27

Adding the plus

Filed Under regular, tout le fromage | 5 Comments

I’ve come up with a new system for labelling the anti-awesome. I call it: adding the plus.

When someone is being a bit nasty or just a dick, then add a plus to their name. It’s a conversation-friendly way of implying that someone is being over the top in a negative way. I work with someone who has been in this FirstName+ mode for about a month. I think recent job stresses have cranked his already bunched panties into a full-on square knot. What really sucks is that I think he’s being even less pleasant to one particular co-worker in the hopes that she’ll quit.
So. Not. On.
You, sir, get the plus.

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Jan

26

A perfect end

Filed Under regular, tout le fromage | 3 Comments

It’s the simple things, really.

My husband came home. Had some soup. We talked about the day and about the new home workspace arrangements (among other things both fleeting and with gravity). Very positive stuff.
Watched CSI (Las Vegas). Drank a couple White Russians. Chatted through every commercial break, in no hurry to return to the program. Conversation drifted to music and the old living room laptop emerged to play to us forgotten videos from Kate Bush. (Thank you, YouTube.)

And now it’s time for bed. Late, but couldn’t have been sooner.
This is what we live for.
Good night.

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Jan

22

Why yes, that IS my drink

Filed Under regular, tout le fromage | 4 Comments

Note to self: When giving a haircut, keep your tasty glass of Bailey’s much further away from the artistic gestures of waving scissors and a comb. The cast off hair will travel.
Much, much further than you think.

Hair in my drink. Yum.
Unless you enjoy having a really unpleasant tickle in your throat for the rest of the evening. * ehhkk hmmm hmmm ghekk *

Before you wonder, of course I saw a few hairs on the surface of my drink. I fished them out like any desperate-to-not-waste-a-perfectly-good-drink person would. After a few more sips, I realised Neil’s hair has INTENSE GRAVITY and had formed a layer of man-carpet across the bottom of my drink.

I’m debating straining it through a piece of fabric because I refuse to be beaten by this situation. This fabric may end up being a pair of my underpants. Clean, of course. I’m not weird, you know.

For the record, I’m feeling much better today. This is normal kind of crazy.

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Jan

21

Now with added convenience

Filed Under me so g33ky, regular, tout le fromage | Leave a Comment

First, thank you to all those who commented (and so quickly!) on my last post. The internet is a remarkable thing.

Second, it was brought to my attention (indirectly via Neil) that it wasn’t easy for people to subscribe to my RSS feeds. OH! But I have remedied that tout de suite. Thank you Paul for bringing this up. So now, just look for the:

and you can get your feed on. Nom nom nom… tastes great!

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to have a stab at making this day awesome.
(Starting with more coffee…)

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Jan

20

Oh, to be the carefree three-toed sloth.

Filed Under regular, tout le fromage | 15 Comments

In my last post I mentioned a bit about my Seasonal Affective Disorder issues. That’s kind of the tip of the proverbial iceberg. As I get older, I am learning more about my own behaviour patterns— paying attention to them, understanding them, anticipating them. I sought therapy (for the first time in my life) about five years ago regarding a serious bout of depression. It was within the first hour with the counsellor that I was asked about ADD/ADHD. So many bells rang as he laid my life out in clinical symptoms, charts, and questionnaires. My family and friends were interviewed. Holy Cow! There was a reason for the way I felt and I finally understood the relationship between my depression and this thing called ADD/ADHD! It was a revelation, certainly. I come from a family line of bi-polar/manic depressives and (especially as I get older) exhibit the recognisable behaviour myself. Of course I never considered mental illness when I was younger— I was just a weirdo. A bit moody and excitable. Just fine. One mustn’t complain, right?

Everyone is different, but for me, my ADD/ADHD tends to flare up and triggers mania, and that mania then triggers clinical depression. There is almost always some sort of choppy sea in my head. Most days I can cope pretty well through an optimistic outlook and learned behaviour to not be so hard on myself. Although I’m generally a happy person, I’m also the master at make-believe happiness.
This winter, however, is kicking my ass.
Hard. In cleats.
My usual tricks and tactics for coping are less effective. I’ve had it bad before, and not that I keep a record, but this is a really long stretch of it. This week has been particularly difficult and I’ve had several days of tears. It’s been messy and not entirely predictable. I haven’t been medicated for ADD/ADHD for three years. They have been, at times and from a mental health point of view, a very trying three years.

I’m doing my best to keep up and blog, write, work, and do all the other life-bits that need attention every day or week, but it’s not been an easy couple of months, and definitely not an easy last couple of weeks. Smiles are less frequent. Writing is at a near standstill. I am as energetic as a three-toed sloth… in a coma. I sleep as much as I can. I would like to be sleeping now (it’s not even 9pm). I’m watching life go by and feel mostly disconnected from it. The oppressively dreary weather outside only adds to the feeling of a floating, grey and blurry, separation from the rest of the world around me. Dammit! What I wouldn’t do for a week of sunshine!

I suppose this hasn’t been a fun post to read, but it’s been an important one for me to write. I got a bit out. I needed that.
Thank you.

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Jan

17

Let’s have springtime, mkay?

Filed Under regular, tout le fromage | 6 Comments

So I’ve just witnessed the storm that precedes the end of days. Of course, I’m still typing, so perhaps it was nothing more than the dress rehearsal of doom. The skies just dumped (in a horizontal way) clumps of ice, buckets of rain, and the kind of wind that causes you to look outside to see if anyone is flapping like a flag as they cling to lamp posts for dear life. All this lasted about ten minutes and WOW what a ten minutes it was. I stepped out onto the mostly enclosed balcony and felt the hail crunch beneath my slippers. The storm was brief and awesome.

Mind you, it’s the middle of January and my area of England has not yet seen snow. We’ve had a couple of brief hissyfits from the clouds (like the one today) but no snow. At least when there’s snow, there is a psychological feeling of winter (more importantly, of winter passing), not just an unbelievably long period of dreary, wet, bone-chilling misery. This pseudo-winter offers no reference points— no shiny, white, sunny days to offset the gloom. The only thing more depressing than a normal winter is a winter that is indistinguishable from the autumn and early spring. Yeehaw! We’ve had a three month long rainy day!

Seasonal affective disorder? Yeah. Probably a bit.

Ah, so before I wrap the post, here’s a photo I took just a few minutes ago. The storm was passing, it was raining behind me (the sun was at my back) and the skies clearing.

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Perhaps I have complained away the storm. I can be mighty like that.

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Jan

14

And when the skies turned blue

Filed Under photos, tout le fromage | 6 Comments

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This red kite was circling overhead.

I wanted a closer shot, but alas, my garden didn’t have anything that interested him. Perhaps another time.

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Jan

14

Just before the blue skies broke through

Filed Under photos, tout le fromage | 2 Comments

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The ominous clouds over Maidenhead this morning.
It was really dark and gloomy.

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