Filed under: Uncategorized
Music has been important to me as long as I can remember. As a small child, I remember listening to my parents’ recordings of Dvorak, Ravel, and the thunderous organ playing of E. Power Biggs. I took piano, and trombone, and voice, sang in various choirs and chorales, played in bands and brass quartets. Music is as much a part of my life as food.
When I am having my emotional/spiritual upheavings, music is an escape. I can put on a certain evocative piece and be transported away from the ridiculous machinations of my mind. I have very strong likes and dislikes. I don’t like music with words, generally, nor do I like stuff that’s popular. Not because it’s popular, but because I prefer songs that are complex. Some music moves me to tears, other makes me want to dance, and some I keep reserved for when I need sleep, and it isn’t coming easily.
I just bought some music. My favorite music person (composer? I guess so) is Mike Oldfield, from the time I first heard Tubular Bells as a high school student to his most recent release Music of the Spheres (I’m listening to it now…he just gets better and better). I have about half his works on vinyl. Dad bought a USB turntable, so I’m hoping to borrow it and convert the albums to CD.
And, ok, call me a musical cornball, so be it. I like Vangelis. I like the whole electronic thing and how he’s not afraid of the bass and his fabulous use of voices. I just got the soundtrack to 1492, and I love it! LOVE IT! Thunderous! Grand sweeping and HUGE…yum.
Anyway, when my moods are pissy, like they’ve been lately, the perfect piece of music can set me to rights, at least for a little while.
What do you like to listen to?
Filed under: Uncategorized
Filed under: Hooray!
I woke up feeling some better this morning. Being snogged by Sweet Daddio helped, enormously.
*an aside* You Aussies and Brits have some fantastic words, ones that should be adopted into the American lexicon tut suite. Snog and whinge are my favorites, and I’m sure there are others. In American, we say “neck” where y’all say “snog”. Necking sounds like something a giraffe would do. Since I’ve started watching BBC, I hear “snog” and “whinge” used alot, and I just think they’re marvelous, evocative words. /end *aside*
Anyway, the tension has lessened, relief is in the air, and I might actually do something useful today instead of just shuffling papers aimlessly and yelling at Amazon for their joke of a download system.
I may go to Willow Pond, since Mr W is moving to a place in Atlanta on Friday, and he asked me to come by see him off. “Bring Rosie” he said, “She’s a crackerjack!”. I’d also like to get the pink dress finished, but I’m not sure I can pull that off because…
We have company coming this weekend. Mom and Dad are coming, because Saturday is the Savannah Scottish Games, and Dad looks for any excuse to wear his kilt. However, Dad is still recovering from his surgery, and may not be up to all the walking involved at The Games, but Mom Will Go, and I’ll go with her, and also #4 and maybe #3. Since Dad and #3 wear the same size, I’m pondering the possibility of getting #3’s redneck self in a kilt for the day. Pigs will fly and Hell will snow and Hillary will give up her day job and start baking cookies, but you never know.
Oh wow…I just asked #3 if he’d wear Dad’s kilt and he said sure, as long as no one takes a picture of him in it. Cue the flying pigs.
Today is a better day. Not perfect, I’m still some tense and not feeling quite right, but better, and better is good.
Filed under: Uncategorized
I find it deeply irritating, to the point of making me want to throw things, when people make these stupid comments like “oh, don’t bother me, I’m having a bipolar day” or other catty, ignorant remarks like that.
I’ll say this to you: YOU KNOW NOT OF WHAT YOU SPEAK.
Bipolar disorder isn’t something that causes you a little sadness here, a bit of elation there. I could live with that, I think. I’d like to try living with that anyway. The reality is:
Bipolar Disorder SUCKS It’s NOT PRETTY or TRENDY blah blah blah
You try waking up in the morning, wondering who you’re going to hurt next, and how. You try feeling like your every action must somehow justify your right to exist, knowing the whole time that you can’t do it.
Get up in the morning, and feel like going right back to bed, knowing full well if you do then you’re only proving to the world that you really are a worthless piece of slime, so you go to work, do meaningless things trying so hard to prove to yourself and everyone around you that you are really normal, but you’re not.
You put on your favorite piece of uplifting music and it, unaccountably, makes you cry. And you’re thankful you’re at home with no one to see you behaving so irrationally.
It’s the irrationality that gets to me, the constant try and try again to be Just Right and failing miserably at it. Other people don’t seem to be trying so hard, and it’s not fair that I should have to and they don’t.
Walking on eggshells, it is, only these are Faberge eggs and the broken bits are glass.
Others around you, they have their issues as well, their lives and hardships and they need a refuge every bit as much as you do and you try and try to provide that but can’t because you’re so wrapped up in the sticky cocoon of this stupid, stupid disorder.
Every time I turn around there’s something wonderful that someone else has done for me, because they wanted to and because they love me. It mocks me. Those wonderful things say “You don’t deserve this” and “Who do you think you’re fooling?”
“Have faith, Jesus loves you” they say. You think I don’t know that? What do you think has keep me alive and breathing for the past 20 years? I asked God to fix me a long time ago. He gave me a competent doctor and a bottle full of pills. It didn’t fix me, it just smoothed the jagged edges a little. I want to tell God I’m tired of this, I want my kids to have a normal mother, and my husband to have a wife he can predict, someone to come home to in the evenings that he can look forward to.
Not this, not this spinning-out-of-control confusion monster, this *thing* I can’t seem to rein in. It’s not fair to him, He works very hard, long hours in a difficult enviroment and he deserves better.
I *know* I am privileged. I can’t imagine the difficulties I’d face if I had to go to an outside job every day. I have a life most people dream about. I *know* that, and yet I can’t get rid of the feeling (and that’s what BPD is all about, it’s *feelings* not *thinkings*) that the whole construct of my life is about to come crashing down around me, and I’ll deserve every single bit of it.
*sigh* I need a hug.
Filed under: Monday Melee
as seen at Fracas
1. The Magnificent: Name someone you absolutely adore, and tell us why.
Well, my husband, because he’s Practically Perfect in Every Way, and the ways he’s not perfect balance out the ways he is so…y’know…it works out. There isn’t anyone else I’d rather spend a week in the car with.
2. The Muddy: Tell us something about life you just don’t “get”.
People who hate an entire demographic because 1 member of that demographic did something bad to them. For instance, man-hating feminists. I totally don’t get them. Men are awesome. (ok, I know not all feminists are manhaters, and I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about the ones who are.)
3. The Magnetic: Name something or someone good (or bad) you’re drawn to and you just can’t help it. Tell us if you want to change this or not.
Hm. I’m going to have to think about that a while. Maybe….hm….that TV show “The Deadliest Catch”. It’s like watching a train wreck in slow motion.
4. The Mainstay: Who or what is something you just can’t live without? Why?
Food…duh.
5. The Masquerade: Tell us something about yourself we wouldn’t already know.
I am pretty much convinced that I’m a sorry excuse for a human being. I don’t know why, I’m just sure that I am.
6. The Mettle: Tell us about a time you showed courage in yourself, or tell us what you wish you had the courage to do.
The first day I walked into Willow Pond with Lily. I was pretty convinced in my head that I’d get laughed at and told to go away, but I did it anyway.
You know what I like about the Monday Melee? If gives me something to post when I can’t come up with anything else.
Lady of the Dawn, no longer available through Jackson and Perkins, which is too bad because it’s really, really lovely and remarkably easy to care for, as roses go.
Sweet Daddio gave me this rose for my birthday some…oh…12 or 13 years ago. When we moved from Monroeville to Auburn, I moved it with us, and again when we moved here to Statesboro 3 years ago. I’m just sentimental that way.
Filed under: what? um...what?
A song is stuck in my head; “Ragdoll” by Aerosmith. Also “Who Are You” by The Who. They’re both rattling around in there for no apparent reason. I like “Ragdoll”, alot, it’s phenomenally catchy. But then I like much of what Aerosmith has done…eh…I lost My Upstanding Christian Housewife license a long time ago, might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, right?
Filed under: Uncategorized
I’ve done next to nothing so far. I made a bowl of lemon cole slaw for the teacher’s lunch at #4’s school. I’m still a little stunned that they called and asked. I’ve only signed up for these lunches for 3 years now, and this is the first time someone has called and asked me to make something. The icing on the cake-my bowl of slaw was empty! Either they really liked it and ate it all, or it was righteously nasty and got dumped down the trash. I’m thinking they liked it, because I am going to be optimistic today.
Lemon Slaw:
1/2 head white cabbage, shredded fine
1/2 cup mayonnaise
zest and juice of 1 lemon
some salt and pepper
a spoonful (teapoonish) of sugar
Mix together everything except the cabbage until it’s nice and smooth. Taste it and adjust the salt and pepper. The lemon zest is important. If you don’t normally fool with lemon zest, this time you should. Toss the cabbage with the dressing, and there you are.How simple is that? I’ve made this the Moroccan way- with smashed garlic, and it’s good too, but the plain lemon variety is is really summery and good with chicken.
After I delivered the slaw, I mailed off some stuff, and went to Walmart for birdseed and a few things for supper tonight. Somehow a bag of those Pringles Selects garlic and parmesan chips wound up in the buggy, next to a bottle of gingerale, so I watched a movie (X-Men The Last Stand) and couch-potatoed. See Hank McCoy reminded me how much I like hairy intellectuals. If I were to have a crush on a fictional character, it would probably be him. AS it is, I’m married to a Hairy Intellectual who has A Temper, so I have my own comic book character right here in my very own house. He’s not blue, but nobody’s perfect.
#4 will be home in 20 minutes, and 2&3 in an hour, and the weekend begins. Time to relax, and maybe start on some supper- chicken tacos tonight- and wonder if SD will be home at 5 or 7 and will he have to work tomorrow or did they get the production run enough to be able to take tomorrow off.
I think I’ll make a bowl of guacamole for tonight as well. Tortilla chips beckon, SD has a bottle of Negro Modelo and I have a Corona.
Now to see if Amazon fixed my download issue.
