Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Tuesday's Dead

Tuesday's almost dead and buried thank goodness. It wasn't such a bad day though. I kept myself busy completing some course work for my TAFE certificate. I can now say that I have manually coded my first simple webpage. Yay me! Who would have imagined that one could manually code HTML! I thought that's what programs like Dreamweaver and GoLive were for. *smiles*

Despite my interest in doing this TAFE course, I have been feeling really flat these past few days. I don't know. Maybe I should have forced myself to get out of the house or something. I've been feeling incredibly anti-social though. I've been wanting to pick up the phone to chat to a couple of friends, one of which I have just reestablished contact with, but picking up the phone can be outrageously difficult sometimes. It's silly.

At the very least I will be forced to leave the house tomorrow. I'm off to the semi big smoke for my usual pdoc appointment. No doubt I will take my camera with me. I made sure that the battery was fully charged yesterday.

Monday, February 06, 2006

What's Wrong Here?

It's a dog's life!

Since I found out that one of my furry kids isn't feeling too well and that she needs to be on a bland diet for a while, it's been a veritable doggy restaurant around here. Chicken has featured on the menu, apparently being the number one choice for easy-on-the-tummy doggy diets. Tonight's succulent choice is ground chicken and pumpkin patties served on a bed of steamed rice. Yep, I'm not kidding. The furries are being spoilt rotten!

On the flip side are the meals that the humans of the house have been subjected to over the past few days. I use the term "meals" loosely too. Hubby and my meals have consisted of pre-packaged frozen pies and fish and chips. Umm ... yum? Last night's "meal" was either starve to death or drink copious amounts of coffee in order to not feel hungry. Good grief! What have I been thinking? I need a real meal!

*Rummages around freezer searching for something for the humans to eat*

Changes

It's official! I'm a student once again! Last Wednesday I enrolled in a Certificate IV in Website Design (online) through TAFE and today I started the course work. I know it's only a certificate level course, but I wanted to choose something I was interested in and that wouldn't stress me out to the max. Hopefully this Certificate IV in Website Design will fit the bill. At the very least, the course will finally demystify cascading style sheets for me. Those things have kept me baffled for years.

As a result of this morning's study, I decided to finally start updating one of my websites. I haven't touched it in at least a year, so it is high time I paid some attention to it. I'm keeping the design incredibly basic (let's face it, basic is all I know how to do anyway), but hopefully it doesn't present as too dull and boring. I will be adding extra pages and images to it over the next few days or so.

Mmmm! That's about all I have to write about tonight really. It's been an average sort of a day. Apart from spending copious amounts of time on the Internet, I threw a couple of loads through the washing machine, cooked up some dinner for the dogs, loaded up the dishwasher and that's about it. Average, average, average!

Saturday, February 04, 2006

Finally! The Week is Drawing to a Close


I am glad that this week is coming to an end. Although in reality it probably wasn’t, this week certainly feels like it was incredibly full-on. With Kara being ill, multiple trips over to the small smoke to visit the vet, my trip into the semi big smoke on Wednesday and my photography expeditions, I feel completely knackered. I need a bloody good sleep but I haven’t even bothered to take my meds yet tonight. Considering my meds help with the whole falling asleep thing, I guess I’m going to be having another late night with no chance of a sleep-in tomorrow and be whinging about feeling worn out again. The things we do to ourselves, hey.

Since I am on the topic of doing things that aren’t particularly helpful to one’s wellbeing, why oh why do I continue to visit the local shopping centre on Saturdays? I know that crowds in shopping centres have the tendency to freak me out, yet I still do stupid things like wait to the very last minute to fill a prescription and thus force myself to venture into the shopping centre when it is at its busiest.

Obviously today was no exception. I started to feel uncomfortable the second I walked through the shopping centre’s entrance. By the time I entered the pharmacy only to be confronted with seemingly scores of people just milling around aimlessly, I was ready to flee. And flee I did! I couldn’t hang around in the shopping centre waiting for my script to be filled. It was just too much. Instead I went to the less busy by far newsagency at the top of town (as opposed to the one in the shopping centre), quickly browsed through the magazines and walked out empty handed. How ridiculous! If laboratory rats and pigeons can learn to avoid negative stimulation, why the hell can’t I? It would appear that laboratory animals have a far greater intelligence than I do. *sigh*

Perhaps the most unfortunate thing about this morning’s experience is that it reminded me that something isn’t quite right. Once upon a time I used to love going to shopping centres just to browse around the stores. Now it fills me with a rather pronounced undercurrent of anxiety and discomfort. I guess I had been lulled into a false sense of normalcy over the past couple of weeks given my relatively good mood. The sharp reminder that things are not okay was a bitter pill to swallow.

It’s funny how life turns out. Surely at some stage during my life I harboured dreams of a happy, meaningful and contented future. It was never meant to be.

Thursday, February 02, 2006

What Makes Your Mate Mad?


What is it about your star sign that drives your partner totally crazy?

I lifted this information from the February 8, 2006 issue of the "That's Life" magazine. I definitely had a giggle when I read both mine and Hubby's signs. It's just so true!

Libra (me): Your inability to make a firm decision (about anything) can be irritating, as is your over-concern with appearances and your laziness around the home.

Cancer (Hubby): It has to be the way you blow things out of all proportion, your hoarding of all those unnecessary items and your tendency to emotionally suffocate.

Well okay, maybe it's not 100% accurate. I'm not overly concerned with my appearance at all, or for that matter what other people think of me. If I was I wouldn't so freakin' overweight at the moment (Grrr!). As for being lazy around the home, that's a humungous yes. The place looks like it's been ransacked. Oh, and I can't make a decision to save myself. *smiles*

Now on to Cancer! Hubby is most definitely a hoarder. Of the five cars we have sitting out the front of our house, four of them don't work! Yeah yeah, I know. In the immortal words of Jeff Foxworthy, "You might be a redneck if ... !" And I won't even mention (oops, looks like I'm about to) the amount of crap we have sitting inside the house. The man has kept clothes from the 1970's for goodness sake. Talk about your bad feng shui!

Aren't relationships bliss!

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Ummm ... Thinking Too Much?

Where to start? I guess I'm feeling a little thoughtful tonight. I don't know how to explain it really, which seems to be so like me. Maybe retrospective? I'm not sure. I'm not really focused on the past per se. My mind is just quiet, yet in some way full of thought.

I went for my usual trip into the semi big smoke today, for my usual appointment with my pdoc. It turned out that last week's appointment was cut short because the pdoc was ill. Silly bugger! Doctors seem to work too hard. I understand that for a psychiatrist maybe the world does stop for some patients if s/he isn't able to see them, but surely there comes a time when you have to look after yourself first. If you are sick, you are sick.

Anyway, that aside, today's appointment was more fruitful than last week's. Why? I guess the pdoc and I actually engaged in some form of discussion. The whole memory thing was once again a major theme throughout the appointment. The pdoc brought up one particular memory that we had apparently discussed a couple of times prior to today, that being the one when, as a child, I sat on the back steps with my pet dog listening to my mother getting stuck into my brother for some reason. I recall that that particular memory was one of the ones I listed in my "100 childhood memories" posts, but as for it being a topic of discussion prior to its inclusion in that list, I am not entirely certain. Perhaps. The pdoc pointed out that the first time this particular memory was discussed, I reacted somewhat negatively, yet on subsequent occasions I had somehow distanced myself from it. Aren't I good! *insert bemused smile here*

I don't know. It's kind of frustrating. It would appear that I distance myself from emotions and feelings regarding events that I should have some sort of emotional connection to. However, I don't understand the what's, the where's and the why's regarding this phenomenon. Apparently it's not the norm, yet it's just the way it is for me. At one stage, I used to view myself as an emotional person, but somewhere along the line I lost that.

I may sound like a broken record when it comes to what I am about to write because I have said something similar time and time again, but I am mystified when it comes to therapy. After all this time I still don't understand what the ultimate goal is. Is it that one day I will miraculously wake up and ... what? Everything somehow fall into place? Feel again? Reach a level of happiness that makes life worthwhile? Actually give a shit? Suddenly go, "Oh that all makes sense ... now I know why I am why I am." Ugh! I don't know! Having a life worth living seems only to be connected to the ability to not think about things. If you think, you are stuffed. It's better to be distant. It's better not to care. Ultimately though, I do not want a life like that. It's not real. I'm sick of not being real. It's the only way I can successfully survive though. Bugger!

Gawd, this whole post is a perfect example of why it is bad to think about stuff. Thinking makes you doubt yourself and write copious amounts of shit.

Just a Thought

Life for Rent
Dido

for rent signI haven't really ever found a place that I call home
I never stick around quite long enough to make it
I apologise that once again I'm not in love
But it's not as if I mind that your heart ain't exactly breaking
It's just a thought, only a thought

But if my life is for rent and I don't learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
Cos nothing I have is truly mine

I've always thought that I would love to live by the sea
To travel the world alone and live my live more simply
I have no idea what's happened to that dream
Cos there's really nothing left here to stop me
It's just a thought, only a thought

But if my life is for rent and I don't learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
Cos nothing I have is truly mine

While my heart is a shield and I won't let it down
While I am so afraid to fail so I won't even try
Well how can I say I'm alive

But if my life is for rent and I don't learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
Cos nothing I have is truly mine

Nothing I have is truly mine ...

Photograph courtesy of stock.xchng - the leading free stock photography site