Really trying hard to keep going these days. Not getting a lot done but everything little thing take so much mental effort it's like a huge achievement when something does actually happen.
Last weekend got a big black bag (black bags are actually blue over here, but I still call them black bags) and went out to the balcony and dumped all of the dead plants into it. At the end of July last year I had access to a car so I took a detour on the way home and bought soil, compost and stones as well as a few small pots of herbs with plans to fill up all of my big pots, pot on the herbs and maybe plant some bulbs for the spring. And the herbs have been on the balcony dying ever since. Well, I kept them alive for maybe three months. Actually, the parsley still hasn't died, so all is not lost. And the soil and compost have been lying on the living room floor. So, the dead herbs from the balcony, as well as the two amarylis that I got for birthday and xmas presents from work and left outside once they started to die off, went into the bag. And I cleaned up the mess that the sap from the amarylis made when it was knocked over and then we had minus temperatures for a while. I moved the bags of soil and compost outside, which has helped with the little tiny fly problem I've been having, and hopefully, since they had a few days of freezing weather now, too, any remaining fly-offspring have been taken care of, too. Such a simple thing to just drag those bags outside but it honestly took me a couple of months of being really annoyed at those little flies to just do it.
Since I had the industrial strength cleaner (leftover from when I moved) out to take care of the frozen sap on the balcony, I also tried it out on the sap that leaked all over the inside windowsill last year when most of my aloe vera plants died. It was absolutely rock solid and nothing I had tried had worked and it had, quite honestly, added a good bit to my feeling bad over and over and worrying what my landlord would say when he found out. But the industrial strength cleaner, while terrible for the environment, actually managed to do the trick (after leaving it to soak for half-an-hour). So that was one more thing achieved. Today I took the approximately one minute I needed to turn around the butcher's block-style rack I have so that I can easily pull it in and out from under the tiny counter, giving me a bit of space to actually work with. Something that it occured to me might be a good idea probably a year ago. But at least it's done now.
Just about an hour ago, I actually took that black bag, added all the current rubbish to it, and brought it down to the big bin downstairs. Today I have also done a wash, which is now hanging to dry. On Thursday I brought the patchwork blanket downstairs and washed it (I told my brother at the start of February I was going to send it to him - that's how long it has taken me to get up the energy to do that task). Today I've made carrot and orange soup, with five portions waiting to go into the fridge for lunches next week. I ate the final portion of pasta bake that I made last weekend and the final portion (well, ok, two portions but they were small so it's now one very big portion) of the soup I made last week is heating up for me to eat for dinner soon. I've made egg muffins to have for breakfasts again. Last week was the second week I did this and I totally burnt them so I was really careful this week. I'm using six eggs and having three muffins every day for breakfast (Monday to Thursday). This week I added a small onion, half a small leek (both chopped very finely) and a very small carrot (grated) with just a bit of salt and pepper as seasoning.
I have my second appointment with the dietician next week and am a bit nervous. I have not, to be perfectly honest, been following her plan very much. But I have, especially in the last two weeks, started to mostly eat "from scratch" food, even if it that has often meant bread and a slice of meat or cheese. I have lost some weight, although not a huge amount but it is just taking me a long time to get my head in the game and I really want to take as long as it takes. There is just no point in forcing myself to eat a certain way without changing my behaviour from deep within. One thing I have been relatively successful with was her advice to leave 4-5 hours between meals and not eat anything during that time. I have done this at least between breakfast and lunch on most days and between lunch and finishing work on slightly fewer but still most days. Evenings are most difficult at the moment. And weekends are a bit tricky, too. I haven't yet started to keep a proper food diary. I really need to work on increasing the amount of fruit and veg I eat. I have definitely not kept to the treats twice a week idea and am still eating some kind of chocolate every day. But generally just once a day and a drastically lower amount of rubbish then, too. It might shock some that that's a reduction but there you have it.
The health insurance company has approved a year-long program for me, which means (I think, need to double-check when I see her next week) monthly half-hour appointments with the dietician and eight activity appointments (I think to be able to try out different exercise classes to find one I like). They cover the bulk of the cost and I have to pay €273 for the year (in three instalments of €170, €58 and €45). I think realistically I'll need two to three years to lose the weight I need to lose but every day I do something that aims towards that goal, well, at the moment every instance of doing something feels like an achievement. One day at a time sometimes has to be one hour at a time and sometimes it feels like all of my strength is going into simply not giving up and actually trying again, with very little leftover to actually make any progress. But as long as I can still do even that much, I'll keep trying.
Showing posts with label unloading brain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label unloading brain. Show all posts
Loneliness
My mind keeps circling around the topic of loneliness the last few days. Trying to figure out if that's the main thing that's wrong with my life. I know moving back to Ireland would not be the right decision for me for a multitude of reasons but have actually starting thinking about what it would be like. But although I would be closer to some of my best friends and to most of my family, I don't think it would fix everything else. Wherever you go, there you are.
One of my best friends flew over to Germany just after my birthday and we met up in Hamburg. The weather was atrocious but we had a lovely time. At one stage, we ended up having a conversation about friends and I realised I'd had this conversation with her before a couple of times because I've been trying to articulate something about friendship that was bothering me and that I couldn't quite get a handle on. Partly that came from making more of an effort, when I lived in Dusseldorf, to get out and socialise. To make friends. The thing is, however, I've never really been much of a one for what I'll call the pub life. Heading into your local, seeing who's there, always finding someone to chat to, etc. Dusseldorf was the first time I'd ever really had that and it was kind of nice. But I find it difficult to be friends on that more superficial level. Not that these people (or I) were any less sincere just because we didn't know each other well but just because that was the nature of the friendship. Little or no contact outside the pub so of course it's not the same as being friends with someone you met in school thirty years ago and have shared so much of your life with since.
People say that it's more difficult to make friends when you're older and there is a certain amount of truth in that. I think some of my oldest friends are people I probably wouldn't end up becoming good friends with if we met today. We're just really different people but because of decades of shared experiences and having gotten to know one another before we even knew what kind of people we were, it works. In one way making friends now that I'm older is easier, as I have learned how to swallow my shyness, most of the time, and strike up some kind of small talk if the occasion calls for it. But because I have mostly, during my life, had fewer but very close friendships, I seem to generally think that all friendships should be like that. So the more superficial kind of friendship is something I've really struggled with.
It's made even more difficult by the fact that it's not at all difficult with some people. Especially men, I have to say. I think perhaps it's because I will often follow the lead, no matter who I've met. So those who are very matter-of-fact about things, I can better react in the same way. There's no attempt to make things more than they are. While with others, it seems like if you get along well, they automatically assume you're going to be the best of friends forever. And that, I think, is something that I'm just less inclined to do these days. I'd rather just let things develop organically, or not. So much of what I've experienced just seems so forced. Perhaps I'm just very lucky to have so many really good friends and should have more sympathy for people who seem to feel a lack in that respect. Perhaps it's just the particular situation and people I met in Dusseldorf. But I have to admit that I felt more relief than anything that when I decided to move, I'd be leaving it all behind me. I didn't find it at all difficult and, to be honest, have missed very little of it.*
At any rate, while trying to articulate some of this yet again to my friend in Hamburg I was talkng about one particular woman. She is a lovely person and while we became quite good friends over the eight years I lived there, I've always sort of struggled with it, especially since having left. Even before I moved but after I'd left work, it had started to become a bit, well, onerous. Since we weren't seeing each other in work, it required more effort to meet up. I remember commenting to her once a while after we met about how funny ex-pat life is and how you end up spending time with people just because they're from the same country whereas at home, you'd never really end up spending time with the same people, because you're just so different/don't have anything in common. She got a bit offended at the implication that she and I didn't have anything in common, even though I had been speaking in generalities. Gaaaggh, I feel like I'm tying myself up in knots again to try and explain it. The same was happening in Hamburg until my friend quite bluntly said, "you mean you just don't want it [to be friends with her]". My immediate reaction was "no, no" but even with a couple of seconds I had to admit that she had absolutely hit the nail on the head. No matter how nice that woman is, I'm just really not that interetsed in being very close friends with her. For me, it was a friendship of time and place and it should now just fizzle out to an occasional meeting if we happen to be in each other's area but not be the big effort that I have felt obliged to make. So, I'm working on it and trying to figure out this astounding new idea that I don't have to be best of friends with everybody who's nice and that it's perfectly ok for me to be "superficial" with some people, even if they want more.
I had other things I wanted to braindump about loneliness but it seems like I needed to get all of that off my chest first. Loneliness is a funny thing and I'm not sure why I'm feeling it so acutely at the moment. Because I am close to my family, I do have lots of good friends, I even have a man to enjoy spending time with (although that's only a few times a year as we live in different countries, with phone calls in between, but it suits us and doesn't stop either or us from seeing other people as well; I'm so glad polyamory has become a bit more openly talked about in recent years, if I didn't even know it was a thing, I think I'd have tied myself up in knots about this otherwise) and I have hobbies which give me plenty of social contact, too. But when I was sitting in my armchair yesterday afternoon, almost physically aching with loneliness, none of them were who I needed. I scrolled through my phone contacts twice and just couldn't raise the enthusiasm to call anyone (although I did delete a few of those "pub friends" and that felt good). It's tempting to say that I just want a boyfriend/husband and that does play a big role. While I'm very happy with the relationship I do have, I would like to have someone around every day to share the little things with. Mind you, I don't think I could stand having housemates again, I do mean having someone around that I was in a relationship with. And the fact that I'm realistically never going to have children now plays a role as well. Even the fact that I could adopt if I really wanted a child but will probably never feel the joy of being pregnant and feeling a child growing inside me plays a role. But I sort of feel like all of that just doesn't quite get to the bottom of it either. So it's back to hoping that winter will pass soon and that that will make things feel better again for a while.
* "It" being the pub life and the circle of ex-pat friends related to that. On the other hand, I also became friends with a large circle of people from choir and I really miss that circle. A few became very good friends and we are still in touch and the others I see once or twice a year when I go back up to attend a concert and it's lovely. But the "pub" circle? Don't miss any of them at all and am even still relieved that I don't have to make the effort anymore.
One of my best friends flew over to Germany just after my birthday and we met up in Hamburg. The weather was atrocious but we had a lovely time. At one stage, we ended up having a conversation about friends and I realised I'd had this conversation with her before a couple of times because I've been trying to articulate something about friendship that was bothering me and that I couldn't quite get a handle on. Partly that came from making more of an effort, when I lived in Dusseldorf, to get out and socialise. To make friends. The thing is, however, I've never really been much of a one for what I'll call the pub life. Heading into your local, seeing who's there, always finding someone to chat to, etc. Dusseldorf was the first time I'd ever really had that and it was kind of nice. But I find it difficult to be friends on that more superficial level. Not that these people (or I) were any less sincere just because we didn't know each other well but just because that was the nature of the friendship. Little or no contact outside the pub so of course it's not the same as being friends with someone you met in school thirty years ago and have shared so much of your life with since.
People say that it's more difficult to make friends when you're older and there is a certain amount of truth in that. I think some of my oldest friends are people I probably wouldn't end up becoming good friends with if we met today. We're just really different people but because of decades of shared experiences and having gotten to know one another before we even knew what kind of people we were, it works. In one way making friends now that I'm older is easier, as I have learned how to swallow my shyness, most of the time, and strike up some kind of small talk if the occasion calls for it. But because I have mostly, during my life, had fewer but very close friendships, I seem to generally think that all friendships should be like that. So the more superficial kind of friendship is something I've really struggled with.
It's made even more difficult by the fact that it's not at all difficult with some people. Especially men, I have to say. I think perhaps it's because I will often follow the lead, no matter who I've met. So those who are very matter-of-fact about things, I can better react in the same way. There's no attempt to make things more than they are. While with others, it seems like if you get along well, they automatically assume you're going to be the best of friends forever. And that, I think, is something that I'm just less inclined to do these days. I'd rather just let things develop organically, or not. So much of what I've experienced just seems so forced. Perhaps I'm just very lucky to have so many really good friends and should have more sympathy for people who seem to feel a lack in that respect. Perhaps it's just the particular situation and people I met in Dusseldorf. But I have to admit that I felt more relief than anything that when I decided to move, I'd be leaving it all behind me. I didn't find it at all difficult and, to be honest, have missed very little of it.*
At any rate, while trying to articulate some of this yet again to my friend in Hamburg I was talkng about one particular woman. She is a lovely person and while we became quite good friends over the eight years I lived there, I've always sort of struggled with it, especially since having left. Even before I moved but after I'd left work, it had started to become a bit, well, onerous. Since we weren't seeing each other in work, it required more effort to meet up. I remember commenting to her once a while after we met about how funny ex-pat life is and how you end up spending time with people just because they're from the same country whereas at home, you'd never really end up spending time with the same people, because you're just so different/don't have anything in common. She got a bit offended at the implication that she and I didn't have anything in common, even though I had been speaking in generalities. Gaaaggh, I feel like I'm tying myself up in knots again to try and explain it. The same was happening in Hamburg until my friend quite bluntly said, "you mean you just don't want it [to be friends with her]". My immediate reaction was "no, no" but even with a couple of seconds I had to admit that she had absolutely hit the nail on the head. No matter how nice that woman is, I'm just really not that interetsed in being very close friends with her. For me, it was a friendship of time and place and it should now just fizzle out to an occasional meeting if we happen to be in each other's area but not be the big effort that I have felt obliged to make. So, I'm working on it and trying to figure out this astounding new idea that I don't have to be best of friends with everybody who's nice and that it's perfectly ok for me to be "superficial" with some people, even if they want more.
I had other things I wanted to braindump about loneliness but it seems like I needed to get all of that off my chest first. Loneliness is a funny thing and I'm not sure why I'm feeling it so acutely at the moment. Because I am close to my family, I do have lots of good friends, I even have a man to enjoy spending time with (although that's only a few times a year as we live in different countries, with phone calls in between, but it suits us and doesn't stop either or us from seeing other people as well; I'm so glad polyamory has become a bit more openly talked about in recent years, if I didn't even know it was a thing, I think I'd have tied myself up in knots about this otherwise) and I have hobbies which give me plenty of social contact, too. But when I was sitting in my armchair yesterday afternoon, almost physically aching with loneliness, none of them were who I needed. I scrolled through my phone contacts twice and just couldn't raise the enthusiasm to call anyone (although I did delete a few of those "pub friends" and that felt good). It's tempting to say that I just want a boyfriend/husband and that does play a big role. While I'm very happy with the relationship I do have, I would like to have someone around every day to share the little things with. Mind you, I don't think I could stand having housemates again, I do mean having someone around that I was in a relationship with. And the fact that I'm realistically never going to have children now plays a role as well. Even the fact that I could adopt if I really wanted a child but will probably never feel the joy of being pregnant and feeling a child growing inside me plays a role. But I sort of feel like all of that just doesn't quite get to the bottom of it either. So it's back to hoping that winter will pass soon and that that will make things feel better again for a while.
* "It" being the pub life and the circle of ex-pat friends related to that. On the other hand, I also became friends with a large circle of people from choir and I really miss that circle. A few became very good friends and we are still in touch and the others I see once or twice a year when I go back up to attend a concert and it's lovely. But the "pub" circle? Don't miss any of them at all and am even still relieved that I don't have to make the effort anymore.
Short and sweet
That's the way it has to go for the next little while, as I want to get back to blogging regularly but something is holding me back. So I'm going to attempt to post at least a few times a week but maybe not more than a couple of sentences. No excuses that time is too short.
Time will be short but that's because I said yes to a huge translation job that I really should have turned down. Getting it done would mean at least two or three hours a day plus all weekend and it is now threee o'clock on Saturday. Since I got the job (on Wednesday) I have spent just about two hours actually working on it. The excuse that I may be coming down with a cold is maybe good enough for having slept in so late this morning. And even for the fact that after waking up at eleven and reading for less than an hour, I took a nap for an hour. But I did actually get up and dressed then, all ready to pop out to pick up a parcel that I wasn't here to take in yesterday. But there is no good reason for me to be still sitting here two hours later.
My mood in general these days is pretty much one of self-loathing and it's hard to tell sometimes whether that's making me self-sabotage just so I can hate myself more, or if I'm just floundering because I feel so useless. Elaine from MFin3 posted a TED talk about procrastination a last week, which I've just watched. I've actually read the Wait but Why post on procrastination before but it was interesting to be reminded and also to hear the bit at the end about procrastination with and without deadlines. The shop I have to collect my package from closes at four o'clock on a Saturday so I'll definitely need to leave here very soon if I want to get my package at all. Short deadlines are definitely easier for me to react to than long ones. It's spreading the work of translating 70 pages out over the next ten days that's hard. If I had 10 to do tomorrow, I'd just do it. Makes no sense. My brain is just so messed up sometimes.
Time will be short but that's because I said yes to a huge translation job that I really should have turned down. Getting it done would mean at least two or three hours a day plus all weekend and it is now threee o'clock on Saturday. Since I got the job (on Wednesday) I have spent just about two hours actually working on it. The excuse that I may be coming down with a cold is maybe good enough for having slept in so late this morning. And even for the fact that after waking up at eleven and reading for less than an hour, I took a nap for an hour. But I did actually get up and dressed then, all ready to pop out to pick up a parcel that I wasn't here to take in yesterday. But there is no good reason for me to be still sitting here two hours later.
My mood in general these days is pretty much one of self-loathing and it's hard to tell sometimes whether that's making me self-sabotage just so I can hate myself more, or if I'm just floundering because I feel so useless. Elaine from MFin3 posted a TED talk about procrastination a last week, which I've just watched. I've actually read the Wait but Why post on procrastination before but it was interesting to be reminded and also to hear the bit at the end about procrastination with and without deadlines. The shop I have to collect my package from closes at four o'clock on a Saturday so I'll definitely need to leave here very soon if I want to get my package at all. Short deadlines are definitely easier for me to react to than long ones. It's spreading the work of translating 70 pages out over the next ten days that's hard. If I had 10 to do tomorrow, I'd just do it. Makes no sense. My brain is just so messed up sometimes.
So it looks like I have a new job
Looks like Sundays are becoming my day for posting something. I'd like to get back to more regular and possibly even more interesting posting sometime but for now perhaps I'll just do a Sunday (or weekend) post to at least keep things going.
The week ended up being a bit of a whirlwind and my first day off on Tuesday ended up fulfilling absolutely no potential for relaxation. Started with an email from the organisation I won the two-year contract with containing the actual agreement (which took a while to read since it referenced lots of various paragraphs from the Civil Code and I'm the kind of person who will go looking up stuff like that), as well as the next job they have for me. Unfortunately it was a huge job and it would have been really touch and go for me to actually get it done in the time they wanted it done. Felt very bad about having to say that I would only do half, even though I know they do have a second translator on hand for just that kind of situation. But much as it would have done my budget an awful lot of good to take the whole thing on it would have meant translating for about four hours every single day for the entire month. On top of the day job, that just didn't seem sustainable. I'd have attempted it if they were really stuck but not just saying yes immediately was the sensible thing to do. Now I just need to get over my own feelings of inadequacy and fear of having disappointed or upset them (no indication of that from them whatsoever, these are entirely my own feelings/projections!). Not helped by finding out later that day that the final part of the stuff I was working on for them last week hadn't been delivered by the author on time and so they wouldn't be sending it to me for translation. So silly of me to feel like this was in any way a reflection of dissatisfaction with me or my work and yet there is always that niggly little voice in my head. Definitely something I need to work on.
Considering the phone call I received just an hour or two after having turned down half of the new translation work, however, it seems like it really was the right decision. Because that call was from the person I interviewed who I thought was not going to offer me the job as she wanted a native German speaker. Turns out that she decided that it'd be worth a try. She had spoken to my current boss and they had agreed that I could continue working for him for the time being but reducing my hours to 50% (20hrs/wk), and she would offer me a permanent position for the other 50% of my time. If, after a few months, it was working out, then I'd switch to full-time permanent working for her. If it didn't seem to be working out then we'd just say no harm, no foul and go our separate ways. However, as I would have a permanent (half-time) position going our separate ways would mean she would ensure that I moved to a different permanent position somewhere else in the university. I don't think I can get across how amazing this offer was - permanent admin positions in the educational sector here are like gold dust! So, all in all, Tuesday was not the most relaxing day one could wish for.
Wednesday started out ok and then in the afternoon came the call from my new boss, apologising profusely that she hadn't taken one section of one law into account and therefore I wouldn't be able to get a permanent contract for part-time with her. You can't mix and match and since my other contract is temporary, that's where the catch is. If she were to give me a permanent contract, my other contract would automatically also become permanent. But since the financing for my current job specifically prohibits a permanent position, that would cause a world of trouble for everyone. It's all good really, though. We'll extend my current temporary contract to cover 100% and then split the hours 50:50 between the two departments. After we know if it's working out or not, then we'll talk about switching to full-time permanent for her. So now it's partly just a matter of trust and partly a matter of just accepting that even if it doesn't work out in the new place (and even if, in that case, she decided not to help out with a move to somewhere else permanent), I won't be any worse off than I am now. And actually, I would have the advantage of having made lots of new contacts, probably among many of the higher-ups in the university, which is always useful. So, yeah, it looks like I have a new job and even sooner than I thought as it looks like they'll be able to get things sorted quickly on the paperwork side, since it's now just an extension of my current contract, rather than a new one. The next two weeks are going to be busy trying to get as much as possible done in my current job so that cutting back to 50% (from 75%) won't have too much of an impact.
For today though, I'm going to try and have a nice relaxing day, where I don't feel bad because I'm not doing any of the hundred things I should be doing at home. I did hoover on Thursday. And cleaned the bathroom and did one wash. On Friday, I brought an old office chair and a bag of rubber floor-mat yokes to the recycling/second-hard warehouse and the approx. two square feet of space that has cleared in my sitting room is fantastic. Yesterday I tackled the washing up that had built up while I was working that big job last Sunday and Monday and since then. I did the last of it this morning, along with the dishes from a lovely dinner last night. I've spent the morning reading bits and pieces on the internet while listening to a golden oldies-type show on the radio and now it's time to get up and have some lunch. And then this afternoon I'm actually going to go into town and go to the cinema. For the first time since moving here fifteen months ago. It's time.
The week ended up being a bit of a whirlwind and my first day off on Tuesday ended up fulfilling absolutely no potential for relaxation. Started with an email from the organisation I won the two-year contract with containing the actual agreement (which took a while to read since it referenced lots of various paragraphs from the Civil Code and I'm the kind of person who will go looking up stuff like that), as well as the next job they have for me. Unfortunately it was a huge job and it would have been really touch and go for me to actually get it done in the time they wanted it done. Felt very bad about having to say that I would only do half, even though I know they do have a second translator on hand for just that kind of situation. But much as it would have done my budget an awful lot of good to take the whole thing on it would have meant translating for about four hours every single day for the entire month. On top of the day job, that just didn't seem sustainable. I'd have attempted it if they were really stuck but not just saying yes immediately was the sensible thing to do. Now I just need to get over my own feelings of inadequacy and fear of having disappointed or upset them (no indication of that from them whatsoever, these are entirely my own feelings/projections!). Not helped by finding out later that day that the final part of the stuff I was working on for them last week hadn't been delivered by the author on time and so they wouldn't be sending it to me for translation. So silly of me to feel like this was in any way a reflection of dissatisfaction with me or my work and yet there is always that niggly little voice in my head. Definitely something I need to work on.
Considering the phone call I received just an hour or two after having turned down half of the new translation work, however, it seems like it really was the right decision. Because that call was from the person I interviewed who I thought was not going to offer me the job as she wanted a native German speaker. Turns out that she decided that it'd be worth a try. She had spoken to my current boss and they had agreed that I could continue working for him for the time being but reducing my hours to 50% (20hrs/wk), and she would offer me a permanent position for the other 50% of my time. If, after a few months, it was working out, then I'd switch to full-time permanent working for her. If it didn't seem to be working out then we'd just say no harm, no foul and go our separate ways. However, as I would have a permanent (half-time) position going our separate ways would mean she would ensure that I moved to a different permanent position somewhere else in the university. I don't think I can get across how amazing this offer was - permanent admin positions in the educational sector here are like gold dust! So, all in all, Tuesday was not the most relaxing day one could wish for.
Wednesday started out ok and then in the afternoon came the call from my new boss, apologising profusely that she hadn't taken one section of one law into account and therefore I wouldn't be able to get a permanent contract for part-time with her. You can't mix and match and since my other contract is temporary, that's where the catch is. If she were to give me a permanent contract, my other contract would automatically also become permanent. But since the financing for my current job specifically prohibits a permanent position, that would cause a world of trouble for everyone. It's all good really, though. We'll extend my current temporary contract to cover 100% and then split the hours 50:50 between the two departments. After we know if it's working out or not, then we'll talk about switching to full-time permanent for her. So now it's partly just a matter of trust and partly a matter of just accepting that even if it doesn't work out in the new place (and even if, in that case, she decided not to help out with a move to somewhere else permanent), I won't be any worse off than I am now. And actually, I would have the advantage of having made lots of new contacts, probably among many of the higher-ups in the university, which is always useful. So, yeah, it looks like I have a new job and even sooner than I thought as it looks like they'll be able to get things sorted quickly on the paperwork side, since it's now just an extension of my current contract, rather than a new one. The next two weeks are going to be busy trying to get as much as possible done in my current job so that cutting back to 50% (from 75%) won't have too much of an impact.
For today though, I'm going to try and have a nice relaxing day, where I don't feel bad because I'm not doing any of the hundred things I should be doing at home. I did hoover on Thursday. And cleaned the bathroom and did one wash. On Friday, I brought an old office chair and a bag of rubber floor-mat yokes to the recycling/second-hard warehouse and the approx. two square feet of space that has cleared in my sitting room is fantastic. Yesterday I tackled the washing up that had built up while I was working that big job last Sunday and Monday and since then. I did the last of it this morning, along with the dishes from a lovely dinner last night. I've spent the morning reading bits and pieces on the internet while listening to a golden oldies-type show on the radio and now it's time to get up and have some lunch. And then this afternoon I'm actually going to go into town and go to the cinema. For the first time since moving here fifteen months ago. It's time.
A not-so-relaxing Sunday
In addition to the big annual report translation job I have going on at the moment, another client came back to me about a potential job that came up in June. It was dragged out and dragged out and then finally, last Wednesday, they came back and wanted some portions of that job done. As my client is actually also completely snowed under at the moment, he asked me to do the tricky part of figuring out how big a job the new reduced volume work is (he will pay me for my time on this but as I still had everything on file from the query in June, it didn't take too long - being a hoarder of files pays off on occasion). And then on Thursday afternoon came back to say it was a go but of course it is super-urgent. I managed to finish off what I had for the other job on Thursday evening after work and there is just one more piece of that to come but I'm not expecting it until Tuesday. Which is probably good as this new stuff needs to be done for Monday.
I had already explained that I have lots of holiday time left and could take time off to do this stuff if needed but I really wasn't expecting them to come back and say they wanted it in less than a week. I had even already asked me boss if I could take off Tuesday to Friday next week, just so that I'd be well-prepared. Oh well. I have to work on Monday because we have several things that need to be sorted out so I'll try and go in early and then head straight to the library with my laptop to hopefully finish off the translation by the end of the day (hooray for only working part-time, if I'm in by eight, I can leave at two, which gives me a good run of translating in the afternoon).
I am currently sitting in the library and about half-finished the biggest section of what I'm doing. I did a little bit on Friday after work and choir (had to sing at a funeral in the afternoon and then had rehearsal for singing at a golden wedding anniversary mass in the evening - should have snuck in a couple of hours of translation between those two but it's back up to 30 degrees every day here so I just collapsed on the couch instead). Yesterday, I did absolutely nothing. Not good when I have an estimated 18 hours worth of translation left to do. Really not sure what was wrong with me. It was probably a good thing I had to get up to go and sing at that anniversary mass, as I might have just stayed in bed all day otherwise. I stopped at a local shop to buy some lettuce and tomatoes on the way home from that. Even though it's not a great shop, it was on the way and the thought of walking the extra 500m to the good supermarket was just too much. I got lettuce, tomatoes, strawberries and a few plums in the end. At least it was all German and the tomatoes and strawberries were local even. After spending an hour or two after getting home literally just lying down sweating, I read for another while and then did actually get up and make myself some dinner. I washed the lettuce (if I don't wash a lettuce on the day I buy it there is a very high chance I'll just end up throwing it out and I'm trying not to do that anymore), washed and hulled the strawberries and washed the plums. I also washed and chopped the tomatoes. They weren't great quality and would have gone mushy very quickly. So, at least I had everything ready to just throw stuff together this morning to bring enough food for the day with me. And I did have a nice dinner with a big salad as an appetiser.
I've been in the library since about 11 (five hours now) and have gotten about 3.5 hours work done. That's pretty average for me, I can only concentrate for so long before I need to take a break and just read something else. And I took a short lunchbreak, too. It's amazing how knowing you can only keep your place for 30 minutes without actually sitting in it becomes an incentive to take very efficient breaks. I've actually been making excellent progress with this translation and there has been some duplication, which always speeds things up. I actually feel like I might get as much as I wanted to get done this weekend finished today (would really like to get the 10 o'clock tram home).
While all of this translation busy-ness is going on, I also got a call on Thursday afternoon asking me to come in for a second interview for a position I thought I had been ruled out for. It's a permanent full-time position in a different part of the university. More like classical secretarial work than the more project-management-oriented stuff I am currently doing. So that's one plus. Permanent is a definite plus. Full-time I'm a bit torn on. The salary increase couldn't do any harm (about 1,700 instead of the 1,350 I currently get net for 75% hours), but I do love not having to work full days. Even adjusting to 30 hours instead of 20 was difficult to do after nine months of 50%. So there's that. And the reason I thought I had been ruled out is because it's a two-person office and the other secretary is also a non-native German speaker and the boss said at the end of the interview that she really needed a native speaker who would be able to correct grammar etc. in correspondence. So I was very surprised to be called back.
The second interview was with a different woman who the boss had asked to talk to me so that she could get a second opinion. She kind of pushed me a little bit (which I don't always respond well to - so although I didn't show it in the meeting, I felt it and still am feeling it) on whether or not I would commit to improving the flaws in my German (grammar) within, say, a year. While I have nothing against learning more and am even prepared to put work into improving, after thirty years of learning it, I think there are limits to how much can be achieved. Especially to satisfy someone else's definition of good enough. I'm torn. And yet there's not much point thinking about it unless I actually get offered the job. And on top of all that, since they're not willing to split the job (job-sharing is technically on offer for all positions at the university but they don't feel it's realistically feasible for this one - I had kind of semi-hoped the person who was leaving might entertain the idea of doing 50% and me doing the other 50%), I would definitely have to leave my current job, which I do really love, even if it's not as quite as secretarial as I enjoy. It feels like a big risk - I nearly hope I don't get offered the job, to be honest, anything to not actually have to make a decision that's not clear-cut!
I had already explained that I have lots of holiday time left and could take time off to do this stuff if needed but I really wasn't expecting them to come back and say they wanted it in less than a week. I had even already asked me boss if I could take off Tuesday to Friday next week, just so that I'd be well-prepared. Oh well. I have to work on Monday because we have several things that need to be sorted out so I'll try and go in early and then head straight to the library with my laptop to hopefully finish off the translation by the end of the day (hooray for only working part-time, if I'm in by eight, I can leave at two, which gives me a good run of translating in the afternoon).
I am currently sitting in the library and about half-finished the biggest section of what I'm doing. I did a little bit on Friday after work and choir (had to sing at a funeral in the afternoon and then had rehearsal for singing at a golden wedding anniversary mass in the evening - should have snuck in a couple of hours of translation between those two but it's back up to 30 degrees every day here so I just collapsed on the couch instead). Yesterday, I did absolutely nothing. Not good when I have an estimated 18 hours worth of translation left to do. Really not sure what was wrong with me. It was probably a good thing I had to get up to go and sing at that anniversary mass, as I might have just stayed in bed all day otherwise. I stopped at a local shop to buy some lettuce and tomatoes on the way home from that. Even though it's not a great shop, it was on the way and the thought of walking the extra 500m to the good supermarket was just too much. I got lettuce, tomatoes, strawberries and a few plums in the end. At least it was all German and the tomatoes and strawberries were local even. After spending an hour or two after getting home literally just lying down sweating, I read for another while and then did actually get up and make myself some dinner. I washed the lettuce (if I don't wash a lettuce on the day I buy it there is a very high chance I'll just end up throwing it out and I'm trying not to do that anymore), washed and hulled the strawberries and washed the plums. I also washed and chopped the tomatoes. They weren't great quality and would have gone mushy very quickly. So, at least I had everything ready to just throw stuff together this morning to bring enough food for the day with me. And I did have a nice dinner with a big salad as an appetiser.
I've been in the library since about 11 (five hours now) and have gotten about 3.5 hours work done. That's pretty average for me, I can only concentrate for so long before I need to take a break and just read something else. And I took a short lunchbreak, too. It's amazing how knowing you can only keep your place for 30 minutes without actually sitting in it becomes an incentive to take very efficient breaks. I've actually been making excellent progress with this translation and there has been some duplication, which always speeds things up. I actually feel like I might get as much as I wanted to get done this weekend finished today (would really like to get the 10 o'clock tram home).
While all of this translation busy-ness is going on, I also got a call on Thursday afternoon asking me to come in for a second interview for a position I thought I had been ruled out for. It's a permanent full-time position in a different part of the university. More like classical secretarial work than the more project-management-oriented stuff I am currently doing. So that's one plus. Permanent is a definite plus. Full-time I'm a bit torn on. The salary increase couldn't do any harm (about 1,700 instead of the 1,350 I currently get net for 75% hours), but I do love not having to work full days. Even adjusting to 30 hours instead of 20 was difficult to do after nine months of 50%. So there's that. And the reason I thought I had been ruled out is because it's a two-person office and the other secretary is also a non-native German speaker and the boss said at the end of the interview that she really needed a native speaker who would be able to correct grammar etc. in correspondence. So I was very surprised to be called back.
The second interview was with a different woman who the boss had asked to talk to me so that she could get a second opinion. She kind of pushed me a little bit (which I don't always respond well to - so although I didn't show it in the meeting, I felt it and still am feeling it) on whether or not I would commit to improving the flaws in my German (grammar) within, say, a year. While I have nothing against learning more and am even prepared to put work into improving, after thirty years of learning it, I think there are limits to how much can be achieved. Especially to satisfy someone else's definition of good enough. I'm torn. And yet there's not much point thinking about it unless I actually get offered the job. And on top of all that, since they're not willing to split the job (job-sharing is technically on offer for all positions at the university but they don't feel it's realistically feasible for this one - I had kind of semi-hoped the person who was leaving might entertain the idea of doing 50% and me doing the other 50%), I would definitely have to leave my current job, which I do really love, even if it's not as quite as secretarial as I enjoy. It feels like a big risk - I nearly hope I don't get offered the job, to be honest, anything to not actually have to make a decision that's not clear-cut!
Sunday
This evening, late enough at just after nine o'clock, I ate some salad as a starter. Just the small amount of oakleaf lettuce I had left in the fridge with a little olive oil and balsamic vinegar as a dressing. Then I had some pasta with a sauce made up of just about everything else in the fridge that needed to be used up. Two small courgettes, three leeks, and some tomatoes, along with a onion and garlic and a tub of cream cheese with wild garlic. I ate half and half is now waiting in Tupperware in the fridge to serve as lunch tomorrow. Actually, I didn't use up all of the courgette, leek, onion and garlic mix as there was too much to fit into the pan. So, after I'd make the sauce for the pasta, I quickly cleaned the pan and filled it up again with the rest of that stuff. I'll be away for a day or two and when I get back, I'll be able to use that to rustle up a very quick dinner. So, at least I've gotten something productive done today.
I'm not doing well at the moment, kind of having a bit of a crisis of confidence, feel like I've had a headache for three or four weeks, am stressing about money, not sleeping very well, and to be honest feel like I'm slipping into a bit of a depressive episode. Feelings of depression are not at all helped by starting to hear mention of suicide prevention day from different sides. Although it doesn't fall on the same date every year, it's always around the same time and suicide prevention day four years ago is the day my sister killed herself. It somehow rubs salt in the wound to be hearing about it for weeks leading up to the day.
And at the same time I have occasional moments of almost pure joy when I'm doing something and realise how different my life is now than it was two years ago. Whether it's walking down the street and catching a glimpse of a gorgeous building or the hills in the background, or doing something for work and realising I don't feel like what I'm doing is a soul-crushing waste of time, or even just stepping outside onto my balcony to take a deep breath of fresh air.
I wonder if I could just get rid of this headache, would things feel better. It's definitely a stress headache, bordering on migraine and it started halfway through the summer school I organised and attended a few weeks ago. So I wasn't terribly surprised. But I just haven't been able to take time to let it clear up as work has been so busy (I have taken two separate days off in the last three weeks but my boss has been away so it has been really busy, with a couple of tasks to take care of that don't occur very often and are just that bit more difficult). Anyway, I have another day off this week and am going to try to extend it to two days. Maybe that'll help.
I'm not doing well at the moment, kind of having a bit of a crisis of confidence, feel like I've had a headache for three or four weeks, am stressing about money, not sleeping very well, and to be honest feel like I'm slipping into a bit of a depressive episode. Feelings of depression are not at all helped by starting to hear mention of suicide prevention day from different sides. Although it doesn't fall on the same date every year, it's always around the same time and suicide prevention day four years ago is the day my sister killed herself. It somehow rubs salt in the wound to be hearing about it for weeks leading up to the day.
And at the same time I have occasional moments of almost pure joy when I'm doing something and realise how different my life is now than it was two years ago. Whether it's walking down the street and catching a glimpse of a gorgeous building or the hills in the background, or doing something for work and realising I don't feel like what I'm doing is a soul-crushing waste of time, or even just stepping outside onto my balcony to take a deep breath of fresh air.
I wonder if I could just get rid of this headache, would things feel better. It's definitely a stress headache, bordering on migraine and it started halfway through the summer school I organised and attended a few weeks ago. So I wasn't terribly surprised. But I just haven't been able to take time to let it clear up as work has been so busy (I have taken two separate days off in the last three weeks but my boss has been away so it has been really busy, with a couple of tasks to take care of that don't occur very often and are just that bit more difficult). Anyway, I have another day off this week and am going to try to extend it to two days. Maybe that'll help.
It's already August
Which means it's quite a while since I last posted. For a while I just had nothing to say and then I felt like I had too much to get down. Just today three separate topics crossed my mind that I want to write about. Just smallish things so since I didn't just make a quick note immediately, I've now forgotten all of them. Posting something every day is probably asking a bit too much but I'm going to try writing at least a little bit every day for the next while, even if it's just writing down the name of a topic that I might like to put some more thought into and write about in the future.
I've now been here over a year and am also coming to the end of an extremely busy time in work, with a really busy time in translating just starting. I did the annual report for an NGO last year and this year they had a tender process for translation work for the next two years and invited me to submit a bid. I spent far more mental energy on the whole thing than I should have but it involved finding a native speaker to do the English to German translations as well as an English native speaker to proofread the stuff I translate. It all worked out in the end though and I ended up winning the job. It means a fair amount of work more or less guaranteed for the next two years, starting with the annual report again. Maybe I'll finally manage to get an emergency fund in place.
For my day-job, I have two interviews coming up. I am currently working at 75% (i.e. 30 hours/week) and my contract, which is non-renewable, runs until the end of May 2018. Basically a decision needs to be made whether or not the graduate program I am working for will continue beyond the intial phase. Financing from the state has been secured to allow all of the students currently enrolled to finish up the three-year program, i.e. up to 2019. However, because of the nature of the financing, the admin position can only be filled using the type of non-renewable 2-year contract I am on. So, if a decision is made to continue the program either as is or in a slightly different form, financing has to be found. This shouldn't be too much of an issue according to the professor who is our coordinator. However, he is approaching retirement age (in the next four or five years) so the issue of having someone continue on fighting for and coordinating the program at the higher level is a serious consideration, too. So, as of the last meeting we had where we discussed it, I wasn't left feeling terribly confident that the program will actually continue. And, perhaps more to the point, it didn't sound like if it does continue, the new arrangements will be in place before my contract runs out. With different financing, you see, the program would essentially become a project, and projects can have admin people on fixed-term but renewable contracts.
As it happens, there have been a spate of ads for other admin positions so I have applied for two and will probably apply for another couple next week. One in particular sounded really interesting and it's a full-time permanent position to boot. In the university sector that is practically unheard of for admin positions. As all jobs are always eligible for job-sharing arrangements I applied saying that I would be looking for 25%-50%. Honestly though, if I get a good feeling and am still interested during and after the interview I think I will tell them that I'd also consider full-time. I'm a bit nervous of that but it's probably the sensible thing to do. I have been so lucky with the people I now work with that I am a bit scared to potentially give that up. But I may have to give it up next year anyway. The other thing making me nervous is actually the full-time aspect. I'm more attracted now to the idea of having two 50% positions because at least there is a certain amount of freedom then if one isn't working out. You're just a little bit less trapped then, when it comes to finances.
The other interview is for another professor in the same institute I work at (different building though, our institute is spread out over four buidlings as it's made up of two faculties that merged a few years ago). It's also a temporary position but a project-based one that has a three-year contract and, if the project were to be extended, the possibilty of renewing the contract. It's a 50% position so either I'd share it with someone else and just do half of it (so 25% of a full-time, to bring me up to 75% in total), or I'd have to cut back my hours at my current position. That position is really moving even further away from classic secretarial work though, so it's a tough one. Technically these are all admin/secretarial positions but this one in particular is definitely moving much further in the direction of project management than I really like. But since classic secretarial work seems to be dying out anyway, that's something I need to take into consideration.
So, all in all, I don't much like the uncertainty of my current position but I'm kind of nervous to change anything about it, too. Hitting the one-year mark has definitely led to lots of reflection though and one thing is for sure, I am really glad that I left my old job and my old city. Those two things were definitely good choices for me.
I've now been here over a year and am also coming to the end of an extremely busy time in work, with a really busy time in translating just starting. I did the annual report for an NGO last year and this year they had a tender process for translation work for the next two years and invited me to submit a bid. I spent far more mental energy on the whole thing than I should have but it involved finding a native speaker to do the English to German translations as well as an English native speaker to proofread the stuff I translate. It all worked out in the end though and I ended up winning the job. It means a fair amount of work more or less guaranteed for the next two years, starting with the annual report again. Maybe I'll finally manage to get an emergency fund in place.
For my day-job, I have two interviews coming up. I am currently working at 75% (i.e. 30 hours/week) and my contract, which is non-renewable, runs until the end of May 2018. Basically a decision needs to be made whether or not the graduate program I am working for will continue beyond the intial phase. Financing from the state has been secured to allow all of the students currently enrolled to finish up the three-year program, i.e. up to 2019. However, because of the nature of the financing, the admin position can only be filled using the type of non-renewable 2-year contract I am on. So, if a decision is made to continue the program either as is or in a slightly different form, financing has to be found. This shouldn't be too much of an issue according to the professor who is our coordinator. However, he is approaching retirement age (in the next four or five years) so the issue of having someone continue on fighting for and coordinating the program at the higher level is a serious consideration, too. So, as of the last meeting we had where we discussed it, I wasn't left feeling terribly confident that the program will actually continue. And, perhaps more to the point, it didn't sound like if it does continue, the new arrangements will be in place before my contract runs out. With different financing, you see, the program would essentially become a project, and projects can have admin people on fixed-term but renewable contracts.
As it happens, there have been a spate of ads for other admin positions so I have applied for two and will probably apply for another couple next week. One in particular sounded really interesting and it's a full-time permanent position to boot. In the university sector that is practically unheard of for admin positions. As all jobs are always eligible for job-sharing arrangements I applied saying that I would be looking for 25%-50%. Honestly though, if I get a good feeling and am still interested during and after the interview I think I will tell them that I'd also consider full-time. I'm a bit nervous of that but it's probably the sensible thing to do. I have been so lucky with the people I now work with that I am a bit scared to potentially give that up. But I may have to give it up next year anyway. The other thing making me nervous is actually the full-time aspect. I'm more attracted now to the idea of having two 50% positions because at least there is a certain amount of freedom then if one isn't working out. You're just a little bit less trapped then, when it comes to finances.
The other interview is for another professor in the same institute I work at (different building though, our institute is spread out over four buidlings as it's made up of two faculties that merged a few years ago). It's also a temporary position but a project-based one that has a three-year contract and, if the project were to be extended, the possibilty of renewing the contract. It's a 50% position so either I'd share it with someone else and just do half of it (so 25% of a full-time, to bring me up to 75% in total), or I'd have to cut back my hours at my current position. That position is really moving even further away from classic secretarial work though, so it's a tough one. Technically these are all admin/secretarial positions but this one in particular is definitely moving much further in the direction of project management than I really like. But since classic secretarial work seems to be dying out anyway, that's something I need to take into consideration.
So, all in all, I don't much like the uncertainty of my current position but I'm kind of nervous to change anything about it, too. Hitting the one-year mark has definitely led to lots of reflection though and one thing is for sure, I am really glad that I left my old job and my old city. Those two things were definitely good choices for me.
Momentum
I've been wondering the last couple of days why it is I find it so difficult to keep up momentum on doing anything. All in all, the year has started off alright and slowly but surely I've been keeping up with and implementing some things that I really want to do. Normally, those small successes reinforce the desire to keep doing them, since feeling good feels, well, good. And yet I struggled somewhat at the weekend, yesterday was a mixed bag of just doing things and struggling. Today feels like it has been an exhausting struggle and even the fact that I've just had some of my homemade chicken and vegetable soup for dinner isn't feeling like any kind of a success at all.
I'm going to head to bed shortly and maybe read a few pages of something before sleeping. Perhaps tomorrow will be better. On the surface, there isn't much actually wrong. I'm beginning to suspect that I've just reached a place where dealing with the next level of issues is possible and so things are coming to the fore in my mind, even if they're still mostly in my sub-conscious and even if otherwise life is pretty good. I've been buying frozen fruit and making a smoothie to bring to work every day. This has meant that I've eaten almost no sweet things at work at all. That is huge for me. And I've been eating a lot of soup as well. So my intake of fruit and veg is way up and if most of it is in liquid form, that's actually suiting me at the moment. I almost feel like my digestive system has recovered from the excesses of December. Next week I'm going to start a few weeks of the blood-sugar diet and I'm looking forward to it and hoping I'll feel as good doing it as I did last year.
I even got some walking in over the weekend. The women's march in Heidelberg might have been a slow walk through town but it did mean that when it was over, I had to walk right back to the other side of town again. And I actually walked a bit further and crossed the bridge towards the tramstop before the very busy one in the centre of town. Then on Sunday it was back into town and a brisk walk to the church where my choir was singing. I didn't sing with them this time but went in to help out on the door and listen afterwards. Then I helped with dismantling the stage and rearranging chairs again and walked back down the town. I actually used my app that time and was surprised to see that it's just over 1km from that church to the centre - it feels like longer. Heidelberg, like many valley towns, always feels very long and getting anywhere seems to involve walking along the very long main street (or one of the parallel streets, which I have been trying to do recently in an effort to avoid crowds and get to know the town a bit better). The main street is 1.8km long in total, so it's not the shortest street I've ever know by any means. I just looked that up to be able to put a figure on it and will believe what Wikipedia says. Also interesting to note that the street was first built in 1220 (not quite as long as today thought) and although it has seen some changes, it still follows the same path. I've only ever known it in its current incarnation as a pedestrian zone (which it became in 1978). It's hard to believe it used to have cars and two-way tramlines on it all the time.
So, I've walked a bit. And my knees are only starting to hurt a little bit so I think if I go easy for the rest of the week, maybe I'll be able to go for a longer walk at the weekend. And I'm eating pretty well. I'm even studying a bit, as I started a five-week online course. And yet...things just feel like a struggle. The unrelenting, unremitting task that is life just keeps on going and that is just how I seem to feel at the moment. Here's hoping it won't take too long before life doesn't feel like so much of a task again. At this stage, I'd settle for this stupid coldsore going away. I think that may be what's bothering me more than anything really!
I'm going to head to bed shortly and maybe read a few pages of something before sleeping. Perhaps tomorrow will be better. On the surface, there isn't much actually wrong. I'm beginning to suspect that I've just reached a place where dealing with the next level of issues is possible and so things are coming to the fore in my mind, even if they're still mostly in my sub-conscious and even if otherwise life is pretty good. I've been buying frozen fruit and making a smoothie to bring to work every day. This has meant that I've eaten almost no sweet things at work at all. That is huge for me. And I've been eating a lot of soup as well. So my intake of fruit and veg is way up and if most of it is in liquid form, that's actually suiting me at the moment. I almost feel like my digestive system has recovered from the excesses of December. Next week I'm going to start a few weeks of the blood-sugar diet and I'm looking forward to it and hoping I'll feel as good doing it as I did last year.
I even got some walking in over the weekend. The women's march in Heidelberg might have been a slow walk through town but it did mean that when it was over, I had to walk right back to the other side of town again. And I actually walked a bit further and crossed the bridge towards the tramstop before the very busy one in the centre of town. Then on Sunday it was back into town and a brisk walk to the church where my choir was singing. I didn't sing with them this time but went in to help out on the door and listen afterwards. Then I helped with dismantling the stage and rearranging chairs again and walked back down the town. I actually used my app that time and was surprised to see that it's just over 1km from that church to the centre - it feels like longer. Heidelberg, like many valley towns, always feels very long and getting anywhere seems to involve walking along the very long main street (or one of the parallel streets, which I have been trying to do recently in an effort to avoid crowds and get to know the town a bit better). The main street is 1.8km long in total, so it's not the shortest street I've ever know by any means. I just looked that up to be able to put a figure on it and will believe what Wikipedia says. Also interesting to note that the street was first built in 1220 (not quite as long as today thought) and although it has seen some changes, it still follows the same path. I've only ever known it in its current incarnation as a pedestrian zone (which it became in 1978). It's hard to believe it used to have cars and two-way tramlines on it all the time.
So, I've walked a bit. And my knees are only starting to hurt a little bit so I think if I go easy for the rest of the week, maybe I'll be able to go for a longer walk at the weekend. And I'm eating pretty well. I'm even studying a bit, as I started a five-week online course. And yet...things just feel like a struggle. The unrelenting, unremitting task that is life just keeps on going and that is just how I seem to feel at the moment. Here's hoping it won't take too long before life doesn't feel like so much of a task again. At this stage, I'd settle for this stupid coldsore going away. I think that may be what's bothering me more than anything really!
Another recipe attempt and some brain unloading
Recipe first. This involves the pork fillet that I bought at the beginning of December and have had in the freezer. Inspired by Two and a Half Men's recent post and feeling like there's a good joke about how their loin was bigger than mine but not finding it, I decided to try to do something with it. I don't have a meat thermometer though and wasn't going to be able to use that method of timing the cooking. So I read through a couple of books, thinking I might do it in the slow cooker but rejected that in favour of amalgamating a few things from a few different places, memory included. And I've added meat thermometer to the list of things I need to buy.
So, I've lined a dish with some tinfoil, oiled it with a small amount of olive oil and put a good layer of sliced apples on the bottom (two fairly big Boskoop apples). I chopped and fried and onion in some butter and sprinkled that on top of the apple, adding five cloves of garlic that I roasted yesterday but didn't finish eating with the rest of the veg. Waste not, want not. Then I poured some olive oil into one of my little yellow bowls (probably about a tablespoon, maybe a bit less) and added herbes de provence, probably about the same amount. I rubbed that all over the pork and laid the pork on top of the apples, onion and garlic. I poured about a mugful of water over the apples and then wrapped the tinfoil loosely over the whole lot. Well, tightly sealed but not tightly packed, if you know what I mean. It has been in the oven at 190C for twenty minutes and I think I'll check it in ten minutes or so.
Since the oven was on anyway, I also roasted 200g of unblanched almonds for ten minutes. I bought a kilo of almonds months ago to try making almond butter and have slowly but surely been eating them but never actually making almond butter. Really want to try it out once and for all. Not least because it's one of the ingredients in these genious ginger cakes and they sound delicious.
Otherwise, I just really wanted to post something. I miss blogging (I first of all wrote writing there but that's not entirely accurate) and amn't sure why I've been so sporadic in doing it recently. I don't quite feel up to any kind of every-day-challenge but I want to try and make a bit of an effort to do things I enjoy more.
I had a very lazy break over the holidays and have done exactly the same this weekend, including on the bank holiday on Friday. It's a bit funny really. It's not the kind of lazy lying around that is just being lazy. I really feel like I need it to unwind. Even though it seems like there are probably better, more active ways to unwind. When I finished work just over a year ago I spent weeks not doing much and wouldn't have done anything at all except that I had to (sorting out stuff with social welfare, tax office, and doing translation work that came in). It was March before I really started to feel like I was getting over work and starting to actually do something every day, like going for long walks and really looking for a new job. It almost feels like I found a job too soon now. I could have used another four or five months I think. Recovering from overwork and chronic overstress takes a long time. And having to go through an extremely stressful time like I had during the move just took so much out of me. If I hadn't had those few months inbetween, I don't think I would've managed it.
It was my guest from hell in July that really threw me for a loop and, since that visit was unfortunately timed for just before a really busy period in my new job, it took me a few months to get over it, even as I tried to really, consciously, fight it and not just let myself be dragged back down into a hole of depression. It's hard to explain really. I suppose the analogy of a piece of elastic fits to a certain extent. After years and years of being stretched too far, I just can't bounce back to where I was before. And I have less stretch in me now, too. My head is, for the most part, however, pretty clear. It's not quite the same overwhelming, grey cover on my brain feeling of depression - so I'm hopeful that I really have made strides forward and am now getting to a stage of needing to just look after myself a bit, cherish myself a bit and allow myself the time and space to realise and accept that in between depression, long-term overwork and stress, and being able to lead a more normal life, there's a whole lot of space and I can't just go from one to the other. I have to keep focusing on the amazing and positive changes I have made in my life in the past year and keep moving in that direction. Even if I'm not there yet, I'm much closer than I used to be so even though it feels like I'm letting time just slip past me, I need to be kind to myself and give myself this time that I obviously still so desperately need.
So, I've lined a dish with some tinfoil, oiled it with a small amount of olive oil and put a good layer of sliced apples on the bottom (two fairly big Boskoop apples). I chopped and fried and onion in some butter and sprinkled that on top of the apple, adding five cloves of garlic that I roasted yesterday but didn't finish eating with the rest of the veg. Waste not, want not. Then I poured some olive oil into one of my little yellow bowls (probably about a tablespoon, maybe a bit less) and added herbes de provence, probably about the same amount. I rubbed that all over the pork and laid the pork on top of the apples, onion and garlic. I poured about a mugful of water over the apples and then wrapped the tinfoil loosely over the whole lot. Well, tightly sealed but not tightly packed, if you know what I mean. It has been in the oven at 190C for twenty minutes and I think I'll check it in ten minutes or so.
Since the oven was on anyway, I also roasted 200g of unblanched almonds for ten minutes. I bought a kilo of almonds months ago to try making almond butter and have slowly but surely been eating them but never actually making almond butter. Really want to try it out once and for all. Not least because it's one of the ingredients in these genious ginger cakes and they sound delicious.
Otherwise, I just really wanted to post something. I miss blogging (I first of all wrote writing there but that's not entirely accurate) and amn't sure why I've been so sporadic in doing it recently. I don't quite feel up to any kind of every-day-challenge but I want to try and make a bit of an effort to do things I enjoy more.
I had a very lazy break over the holidays and have done exactly the same this weekend, including on the bank holiday on Friday. It's a bit funny really. It's not the kind of lazy lying around that is just being lazy. I really feel like I need it to unwind. Even though it seems like there are probably better, more active ways to unwind. When I finished work just over a year ago I spent weeks not doing much and wouldn't have done anything at all except that I had to (sorting out stuff with social welfare, tax office, and doing translation work that came in). It was March before I really started to feel like I was getting over work and starting to actually do something every day, like going for long walks and really looking for a new job. It almost feels like I found a job too soon now. I could have used another four or five months I think. Recovering from overwork and chronic overstress takes a long time. And having to go through an extremely stressful time like I had during the move just took so much out of me. If I hadn't had those few months inbetween, I don't think I would've managed it.
It was my guest from hell in July that really threw me for a loop and, since that visit was unfortunately timed for just before a really busy period in my new job, it took me a few months to get over it, even as I tried to really, consciously, fight it and not just let myself be dragged back down into a hole of depression. It's hard to explain really. I suppose the analogy of a piece of elastic fits to a certain extent. After years and years of being stretched too far, I just can't bounce back to where I was before. And I have less stretch in me now, too. My head is, for the most part, however, pretty clear. It's not quite the same overwhelming, grey cover on my brain feeling of depression - so I'm hopeful that I really have made strides forward and am now getting to a stage of needing to just look after myself a bit, cherish myself a bit and allow myself the time and space to realise and accept that in between depression, long-term overwork and stress, and being able to lead a more normal life, there's a whole lot of space and I can't just go from one to the other. I have to keep focusing on the amazing and positive changes I have made in my life in the past year and keep moving in that direction. Even if I'm not there yet, I'm much closer than I used to be so even though it feels like I'm letting time just slip past me, I need to be kind to myself and give myself this time that I obviously still so desperately need.
Procrastinating and pictures
I have a master's thesis to proofread and it is almost hurting my head. It's rather philosophical in nature and that's never my best area. I tend to get bogged down in thinking, don't necessarily have the tools to be doing a lot of that kind of thinking, but I find it difficult to distance myself from the ideas and just concentrate on whether that comma should be there or not. So today (and yesterday), I have been dillydallying and there has been quite a lot of procrastination. For a while early this afternoon I thought I was making good progress but now it's after nine and I still have nearly 30 pages to get through. Aaagh.
On the other hand, as has happened before, procrastinating on this task has meant that I've actually picked up and done, or at least started, a few other tasks that I have been procrastinating on for a while. So I've hung a few pictures up, or at least stood them up near where I want to hang them, to see if they work in that spot. After all of my pictures came crashing down in a pile now long after I moved, resulting in many broken frames and smashed glass, I was faced with the spectre of having to spend loads of money replacing them all. And so I did what I am wont to do in situations like that, pushed them to one side and ignored the situation.
I ordered one frame online a few weeks ago and it felt so good to hang that picture up again that it has been in my mind to do a few others soon. So during the week, I hung the "Keep Calm and Carry On" poster that I was given for my 40th birthday (I'll be 42 soon!). I did put that into a frame more than a year ago but never did get around to hanging it. There's a small chip of glass out of one corner from the toppling incident in July but otherwise it's fine. So I went ahead and hung that in my hallway.
The frame on the picture I have of St. Patrick's Cathedral was completely destroyed and it's an unusual size (fairly old and imperial rather than metric measurements) that's hard to find something for here. Today, while clearing stuff from one pile, I found two empty frames that used to hold pictures that I have since gotten more suitable frames for. And it occurred to me that they weren't that much smaller than the St. Patrick's picture. So I checked it out, and ended up just cutting away the extra mounting board (less than two centimetres top and bottom and barely half a centimetre each side) and put it into one of those frames. I am so pleased with it, it actually looks better, I think, than the original frame. Just need to find the perfect spot to hang it now.
And then I hung my Derek Beggs' print. And I've search for and found the music I promised a friend I would give her soon. And found the health insurance form I needed to find. Not to mention that while doing that, I found a whole pile of health insurance and pension stuff that I never got around to filing before moving and that I was looking for recently.
So, I may be looking at a late night working after all that procrastination, but at least it was a pretty productive day.
On the other hand, as has happened before, procrastinating on this task has meant that I've actually picked up and done, or at least started, a few other tasks that I have been procrastinating on for a while. So I've hung a few pictures up, or at least stood them up near where I want to hang them, to see if they work in that spot. After all of my pictures came crashing down in a pile now long after I moved, resulting in many broken frames and smashed glass, I was faced with the spectre of having to spend loads of money replacing them all. And so I did what I am wont to do in situations like that, pushed them to one side and ignored the situation.
I ordered one frame online a few weeks ago and it felt so good to hang that picture up again that it has been in my mind to do a few others soon. So during the week, I hung the "Keep Calm and Carry On" poster that I was given for my 40th birthday (I'll be 42 soon!). I did put that into a frame more than a year ago but never did get around to hanging it. There's a small chip of glass out of one corner from the toppling incident in July but otherwise it's fine. So I went ahead and hung that in my hallway.
The frame on the picture I have of St. Patrick's Cathedral was completely destroyed and it's an unusual size (fairly old and imperial rather than metric measurements) that's hard to find something for here. Today, while clearing stuff from one pile, I found two empty frames that used to hold pictures that I have since gotten more suitable frames for. And it occurred to me that they weren't that much smaller than the St. Patrick's picture. So I checked it out, and ended up just cutting away the extra mounting board (less than two centimetres top and bottom and barely half a centimetre each side) and put it into one of those frames. I am so pleased with it, it actually looks better, I think, than the original frame. Just need to find the perfect spot to hang it now.
And then I hung my Derek Beggs' print. And I've search for and found the music I promised a friend I would give her soon. And found the health insurance form I needed to find. Not to mention that while doing that, I found a whole pile of health insurance and pension stuff that I never got around to filing before moving and that I was looking for recently.
So, I may be looking at a late night working after all that procrastination, but at least it was a pretty productive day.
Moving on
Trying not to let myself get caught in a downward spiral and moving on. Except that I really think I'm sick. Nothing definite, but just not quite right. I've almost had a cold for a good few weeks but managed to keep it at bay. Then last weekend I was miserable with an ear infection but by the time I got to the doctor on Tuesday it was mostly better except for the slight dizziness so there was nothing to do really. On Friday morning my temperature was quite low, 35.5 rather than the usual 36.1 or 35.9. Since I started taking my temperature on a daily basis a few years ago I've noticed that my temperature often sinks when I'm not well. And then yesterday morning it was all the way up at 36.5, which is very close to feverish (if you take fever as being half a degree above your normal temp), during the day it got up to 36.7 and in the evening it was back down to 35.9. This morning it was back up to 36.6 again. Just to be on the safe side, I'm going to dig out a spare thermometer and check with that, too. But I've had a bit of a headache for a few days, too. So I don't know. Just one of those cold/flu-like things that come around sometimes. Undoubtedly not helped by the fact that my diet over the last few weeks really hasn't been particularly healthy.
I know that needs to change anyway so despite not feeling great I did actually get up eventually yesterday evening and made some bolognese sauce. And today I made some leek and potato soup and boiled the rest of the potatoes to have with the bolognese sauce. Finding it hard to get enthusiastic about pasta at the moment. So it's back to babysteps in cooking properly, trying to take it easy and just kick this thing once and for all. I have next week off work so that's something, although I hate "wasting" time off being sick. I took the week off to use up the overtime I built up during our summer school week in August so at least I'm not using holiday days. I have a dentist appointment on Thursday so will be spending a couple of days in Dusseldorf. I've replaced just about every doctor but I'm still hesitating on the dentist. I'm not the easiest patient so having found such a great dentist (for me), I'm reluctant to go looking for a new one here. I know I have to because adding 80 euro in travel costs to every visit to the dentist is just silly but for this first time, I said I'd do it. It'll allow me to catch up with some friends while I'm there.
I know that needs to change anyway so despite not feeling great I did actually get up eventually yesterday evening and made some bolognese sauce. And today I made some leek and potato soup and boiled the rest of the potatoes to have with the bolognese sauce. Finding it hard to get enthusiastic about pasta at the moment. So it's back to babysteps in cooking properly, trying to take it easy and just kick this thing once and for all. I have next week off work so that's something, although I hate "wasting" time off being sick. I took the week off to use up the overtime I built up during our summer school week in August so at least I'm not using holiday days. I have a dentist appointment on Thursday so will be spending a couple of days in Dusseldorf. I've replaced just about every doctor but I'm still hesitating on the dentist. I'm not the easiest patient so having found such a great dentist (for me), I'm reluctant to go looking for a new one here. I know I have to because adding 80 euro in travel costs to every visit to the dentist is just silly but for this first time, I said I'd do it. It'll allow me to catch up with some friends while I'm there.
Lots of veg but have lost the enthusiasm
I went to the market yesterday and, even though it still bugs me that the one guy there selling veg mostly seems to buy stuff from a standard wholesaler and is not at all interested in my questions on what he has grown himself,* I bought a whole load of veg from him.
None of it is organic and he definitely seems to go for the sell lots for cheap mantra. Such a change from the farmers' market in Dusseldorf, where nothing could be sold that wasn't produced within an 80km radius and there were two organic farmers who were passionate about what they did and, if they did sell anything they hadn't grown themselves, were selling it on behalf of neighbour farmers who didn't grow enough to justify the cost of a market stall. Still, I suppose it did still make for a pretty picture.
That lot cost me €9.80, with the two cartons of free-range eggs and the turkey breast costing another €8.30. I only wanted one salad but he gave me two for the price of one. That made sense at the beginning of the summer when they were still very small but these ones are big enough that one barely fits into my salad spinner. So, as well as the salad there are onions, carrots, red cabbage, cauliflower and kohlrabi. I plan to slice the kohlrabi and fry it to eat with salad. Sometimes I get tired of just cold salad and like to have something warm to go with it. The turkey will mostly be used for the same thing, although I may use some of it to have a stirfry on Sunday. A couple of the carrots will be used to make kidney bean, carrot and cumin burgers and the rest will last for a whlie. That's just over a kilo of carrots, in case you were wondering.
I want to get some potatoes and do spicy potatoes and cauliflower. Had a real craving for it for some reason although now that I think about it, I must be mad. It's cooler this week but still hot and I want to put the oven on? Madness.
The red cabbage will become it's usual, braised cabbage with apples. There is a little place on campus that sells fruit and veg grown in a community garden not far from the university. I'm going to call in there on Monday and see if maybe that will offer a good alternative for me. And hopefully get some local apples and potatoes while I'm there.
And all of that was really an attempt to get me enthusiastic enough to want to do any of that. After a really excellent week in terms of food, where I actually cooked/prepared and ate good food for three meals a day, five days in a row, I went totally off the rails yesterday. And if I wasn't feeling a bit under the weather today, I think I'd be down the supermarket stuffing my bag full of more crisps and chocolate to do the same again today. But I think I'm starting a cold, I have a bit of a headache and am generally not feeling too good. So I think I'm going to have a duvet day and just stay put.
I worked very late yesterday and came up to find that there was a Seelsorger having a cigarette break outside my front door. A Seelsorger is a type of pastoral worker, literally a "soul carer" and they get called out when someone has died, for example. I didn't think it was appropriate for me to ask her what had happened so we just chatted for a minute or two when she asked me not to close the front door and that was it. But once I was in my apartment I realised that all the noise was coming from next door. I've never met the guy from that apartment. He uses it as his office and lives in another apartment downstairs. Or lived, I should say, as it turns out that he died yesterday. I peeked out the spyhole in my door once or twice to see what all the noise was about and saw them bringing the body out. So once they were gone I waited for a few minutes until I heard someone else and then I opened the door to ask what had happened. The policeman who was just locking up simply said that he had died but at least confirmed that it was the guy who rented the apartment that died. I didn't really have much of a reaction yesterday but it did keep me awake a bit last night and it's bothering me now that I don't know how he died because I'm finding myself dwelling on it a bit. September is, of course, suicide awareness month and in a couple of weeks it'll be my sister's third anniversary. So that's all mixing itself up in my head in strange ways. Would be something of a relief to just know exactly what happened to him, I think but given that I never met him, I'm not likely to ever know. It's very sad though, I don't think he was very old. Am trying hard to translate all of these thoughts and feelings into more impetus to get myself healthy!
*He does grow stuff himself and you'd think he'd want to sell more of that stuff but that doesn't seem to be the case. The most I can say for yesterday's purchases is that it's all German. Can't even say it's all regional. Really, I could have just gone to the supermarket.
None of it is organic and he definitely seems to go for the sell lots for cheap mantra. Such a change from the farmers' market in Dusseldorf, where nothing could be sold that wasn't produced within an 80km radius and there were two organic farmers who were passionate about what they did and, if they did sell anything they hadn't grown themselves, were selling it on behalf of neighbour farmers who didn't grow enough to justify the cost of a market stall. Still, I suppose it did still make for a pretty picture.
 |
| I put a pencil in the shot so that you can get an idea of how huge those kohlrabi are, I only asked for two because the ones at the front of the pile were fairly small |
I want to get some potatoes and do spicy potatoes and cauliflower. Had a real craving for it for some reason although now that I think about it, I must be mad. It's cooler this week but still hot and I want to put the oven on? Madness.
The red cabbage will become it's usual, braised cabbage with apples. There is a little place on campus that sells fruit and veg grown in a community garden not far from the university. I'm going to call in there on Monday and see if maybe that will offer a good alternative for me. And hopefully get some local apples and potatoes while I'm there.
And all of that was really an attempt to get me enthusiastic enough to want to do any of that. After a really excellent week in terms of food, where I actually cooked/prepared and ate good food for three meals a day, five days in a row, I went totally off the rails yesterday. And if I wasn't feeling a bit under the weather today, I think I'd be down the supermarket stuffing my bag full of more crisps and chocolate to do the same again today. But I think I'm starting a cold, I have a bit of a headache and am generally not feeling too good. So I think I'm going to have a duvet day and just stay put.
I worked very late yesterday and came up to find that there was a Seelsorger having a cigarette break outside my front door. A Seelsorger is a type of pastoral worker, literally a "soul carer" and they get called out when someone has died, for example. I didn't think it was appropriate for me to ask her what had happened so we just chatted for a minute or two when she asked me not to close the front door and that was it. But once I was in my apartment I realised that all the noise was coming from next door. I've never met the guy from that apartment. He uses it as his office and lives in another apartment downstairs. Or lived, I should say, as it turns out that he died yesterday. I peeked out the spyhole in my door once or twice to see what all the noise was about and saw them bringing the body out. So once they were gone I waited for a few minutes until I heard someone else and then I opened the door to ask what had happened. The policeman who was just locking up simply said that he had died but at least confirmed that it was the guy who rented the apartment that died. I didn't really have much of a reaction yesterday but it did keep me awake a bit last night and it's bothering me now that I don't know how he died because I'm finding myself dwelling on it a bit. September is, of course, suicide awareness month and in a couple of weeks it'll be my sister's third anniversary. So that's all mixing itself up in my head in strange ways. Would be something of a relief to just know exactly what happened to him, I think but given that I never met him, I'm not likely to ever know. It's very sad though, I don't think he was very old. Am trying hard to translate all of these thoughts and feelings into more impetus to get myself healthy!
*He does grow stuff himself and you'd think he'd want to sell more of that stuff but that doesn't seem to be the case. The most I can say for yesterday's purchases is that it's all German. Can't even say it's all regional. Really, I could have just gone to the supermarket.
Saturday randomness
- Have a vague feeling at the moment that I really want to get back to blogging regularly but don't really feel like I can be bothered putting the effort into composing posts. Which makes it sounds like I do put effort in normally, which isn't really the case. I normally just sit down and start typing. And while sometimes I do manage to take and post photos, not having any doesn't really ever hold me back either. I'm just in kind of a funny place as far as writing is concerned in general I think. Still toying with the idea of trying to write a romance novel, ideas of maybe digging out the chapters I wrote for the 3-day-novel contest a few years ago and working on that have started surfacing and I still think about actually trying to write properly researched essay-type things for the blog or just for myself sometimes. I think working in a college environment now is simultaneously inspiring and intimidating me, leading to a kind of paralysis. That's not the right word really, though. It's more like I feel somehow stifled. It's all a bit strange.
- After a week or two where it seemed like the weather was cooling down and I had started to look forward to long autumnal walks it has gotten hot again. Heading for 35 degrees every day over the last few days. So today I decided I wasn't even going to pretend that I'd do anything or go anywhere. I closed the shutter on the east side of my apartment this morning and have only just re-opened it. And then once the sun started making its way around to the other side I closed the windows and the shutters. I know it's worth it, even though it seems a pity to shut out the light. Just can't handle it at the moment.
- Having decided to not do anything at all today I did of cousre then get up and make myself a lovely brunch. Onions and tomatoes sauteed with a splash of balsamic vinegar, then a tin of tuna and three eggs added to make a very tasty omelette. Or at least it would have been an omelette if it hadn't all fallen apart.
- And then for good measure I actually cut up the beef I bought the other day and prepared the marinade for the stir-fry dish I saw on 59 pounds to go. At nearly 13 euro!!! for enough for two people (albeit generous portions), I'm reminded of why I really quite rarely buy meat. And that was the cheaper of the cuts. So yep, reminded again of why I don't buy a lot of meat and why most of what I do buy is cheaper cuts for slow-cooking. And particularly glad that I didn't end up wasting the beef just 'cos it got too hot for cooking again. It's marinating in the fridge now and if I don't do it this evening, it'll still be fine for tomorrow. I have frozen beans and broccoli so apart from chopping up a couple of carrots and some onion, it'll be a minimal effort meal. I'm not even going to bother making rice, it really is too hot so I'll just pile on the veggies and enjoy it like that.
- I've almost made it to the end of the month without spending a whole pile more than intended. Won't quite end the month without needing to pull a small amount from savings but that's because I forgot about the letter I know was going to arrive from the social welfare. Have to repay 320 euro from May (my last month of dole money) as I earned quite a bit in translation work that month. So if I don't spend anything for the next week I'll need to pull 60 from savings to pay that. It has left things tight the past week but I'm still glad I decided to just live with things being a bit tight for a week or two rather than pulling the whole lot from savings. I was paid for one big job I did at the end of June (new client and it took a while for me to be added to their database as a creditor) as well as a couple of other outstanding invoices and most of that money went straight to savings. I'm really trying to be conscientous about putting money aside for tax and will have a few more big annual bills to pay in September. And I'm trying to knock down the overdraft on my Irish account finally. Even if I only manage to pay 50 a month to that I really need to see it going down.
- July and August brought almost no translation work so I will need to be careful to take account of that in the coming years. There are some industries that basically go on holidays for those two months in summer and translations seems to be one of them. I was starting to get really worried as I don't have any other outstanding invoices (except one, which it looks like I'm going to have to start down the legal route to try and recover) and I wasn't sure how I was going to come up with the money I need on top of my day-job salary to cover my expenses. And then on Tuesday I had two separate queries from potential new clients. One, I am happy to say, confirmed on Thursday that I had gotten the job and it'll be enough to cover the gap between salary and expenses for two months so that creates a bit of breathing space. The other was for an agency that wasn't offering a lot of money and I was in two minds about it as it would be a guaranteed three-years of continuing jobs for one particular client so even at a very low rate, it might be just what I need to keep things going. However, after two emails they haven't responded to the rest of my questions so I think I'm going to take it as a sign that I may be better off without that agency. They've also been banned from one of the big translator websites, which probably isn't a good sign anyway.
- On the day-job front, there is a posting up for another half-day job in the university but it seems like it's for a permanent position. I'm in two minds as to whether to apply for it or not but I think I will go for it. If I did manage to get offered the position, I don't have to say yes. I don't really want to go back to working full time at the moment (full time and then some, if translating picks up again) but I think I would feel much better with the security of a permanent position. My boss is definitely working on trying to get our program funded long-term, bringing with it the possibility of a permanent or at least far longer contract than I have now but these things work very slowly. And of course he's on holidays at the moment so I can't even check in and find out how all of that is going. So I think I'll apply for it and then see what happens. It would scupper the possibility of increasing my hours to 75% at the current job, too, probably. Unless the new professor was willing to allow the 50% job to be shared among two.
- There was a bird on my balcony railing for more than two hours earlier. I was worried it was injured but it didn't seem to be. I put some water out but I don't think it touched it. It has gone now so I hope it is alright and just needed a long rest.
- I've used the excuse of too much work and stress due to the summer school we held a week ago to eat far too many sweets and crisps. I think I've finished absolutely everything that's in the house now, though, so I may try the blood sugar diet again for a couple of weeks before going back to fasting properly. I've fasted for shorter periods on and off over the last few weeks of craziness and still find it remarkable how much better I feel when I manage to do it. I'm going to do a variation of the blood sugar diet though. Thinking about it I realised that one thing that kind of holds me back is using fats in cooking, or rather having to count the caloires of those fats. So, I think I'll do 800 calories plus oils/butter. I don't use a huge amont anyway and I think it's a restriction that was having more of an impact on my mind than I realised. Even if I'm going above 800 calories on most days, it will still be enough to be losing weight.
- For years and years, ever since blogger introduced stats as a standard thing for people to see, I've checked on mine on and off. And for years and years, it was pretty normal for this blog to receive about 50 hits a day. I think about 15 of these were actual regular readers and the rest mostly as a result of google searches. Haven't ever really tried to do anything to increase readership or stats in any way and am perfectly happy with that. It gave me a bit of a thrill in April 2013 when I participated in the A-Z of blogging and saw a spike in numbers for that month but not so much of a thrill that I'd ever really be bothered chasing them again if you know what I mean. Still, it wsa nice to know that someone was reading. Since May this year I think I've been found by some kind of bot though. I now have bewteen 500 and 1,000 hits every single day. For absolutely no reason. And with no-one new commmenting, I think my impression of "fake" hits probably isn't too far off. It's mildly irritating as it means my stats are now completely meaningless.
- And finally, I bought a new red sheet a while ago and just before leaving for summer school I put it on the bed for the first time. Was worried about it looking a bit bordello-like but it's actually just really cheerful and I love it. Best impulse purchase for a long time.
Sunday
Have had couple of phone calls with brother and exchanged txt messages with several others.
Did some research on how to get my sister the help it seems she will need at a treatment centre (a litre of vodka a day is no longer just a few too many on the weekend).
Got three loads of washing done and dried/drying on the balcony.
That's it but it's absolutely all I have been capable of today. I've just ordered myself a takeaway (not at all in the plans or the budget) and I'm giving up for the evening. It'll be an early night for me and the hope that tomorrow will miraculously bring only good news.
Did some research on how to get my sister the help it seems she will need at a treatment centre (a litre of vodka a day is no longer just a few too many on the weekend).
Got three loads of washing done and dried/drying on the balcony.
That's it but it's absolutely all I have been capable of today. I've just ordered myself a takeaway (not at all in the plans or the budget) and I'm giving up for the evening. It'll be an early night for me and the hope that tomorrow will miraculously bring only good news.
Let's try to focus on the positive
Everything has been so lovely since I moved here (once I started getting over the moving part of moving that is) that this week's setback is kind of knocking me for six a bit. I hate feeling like if I had the financial means rights now, I would prefer to move house. I've all but completely forgotten about keeping up with my list of simple things that make me happy because, well, just about everything has been so great it felt a bit like there wasn't much of bad to be mitigated. So, now that there is negative stuff, I really need to try and put some of the tools I have learned about over the years back into practice.
With that in mind, here are a few positive things from the last couple of days:
With that in mind, here are a few positive things from the last couple of days:
- Got my renewal notice for house insurance. My insurance premium went down when I moved to this area (hooray). The insurance perios runs from August to July and this year's renewal also included a deduction for the difference for the few months since I moved here until 1 August. So as well as the savings for the next 12 months, I didn't have to pay 6.89 of the bill that I did get.
- Receiving that renewal notice reminded me that the renewal notice for my personal liability insurance came in last week. That'd be one of the things my guest from hell tidied out of sight out of mind on me so at least I was able to go searching for it and get that paid as well.
- I may not have paid off the moving costs yet but I did have money put aside for these two bills and was able to pay them without stressing.
- Despite an extraordinarily unproductive day in work (spent two hours not actually working, just surfing the internet), overtime that I worked last week means that I haven't actually gone into minus hours. Being solely responsible for tracking whether or not I have worked my 20 hours, with nobody tracking it at all, is just so great and it's really keeping me honest, which is, y'know, one of my favourite feelings.
- I can hear thunder rumbling in the distance so am hopeful that the heat might break a bit and I'll be able to sleep properly tonight.
- Tomorrow I'm going to go and buy turquoise/blue paint to paint the remaining bookshelf and get some colour cards to decide what colour red I want to paint my dresser.
- There's a half-packet of maltesers in the fridge.
- I found local, organic produce at a supermarket that's on my way between work and home. So I have courgettes, salad and tomatoes waiting for me to eat over the weekend.
- This morning started off with a lovely phone call with a good friend.
- I managed to get through to a podologist who lives just down the road from me and have an appointment next week. I really hope she's good because it would be so convenient. And her rates are very, very reasonable.
Rejection
This post may be a bit disjointed - it's one o'clock in the morning, it was another very warm day and I am tired. And browned off. Had to audition for choir this evening and didn't get in. And this after rehearsing with them for four weeks. Normally, I think, you rehearse for two weeks and then do your audition. But I wasn't able to be there on the day the auditions were planned for and then it seems they kind of forgot about me. Until I asked a question about something last week and it was all a big drama that I wasn't actually already an accepted member, culminating in one fairly agressive woman coming up to me at the beginning of rehearsal this evening to insist to me that I would not be allowed to sign up for the rehearsal weekend in September until after I had done an audition and been accepted.
Now, I'm not a great singer. I can hold a tune but I don't have a particularly strong voice and there is just nothing special about my voice. But I do have a lot of years of choir experience under my belt and wasn't really particularly worried about not being accepted. That woman's attitude and a couple of other things that I've noticed and experienced over the last few weeks were working in my mind the whole time that we were rehearsing this evening and I had actually decided that I would graciously decline the option of singing with them after my audition and was coming up with ways to phrase it politely. But as it turned out, I didn't sing well in the audition at all. He also asked me to sing something from the score of what we had been rehearsing this evening but I am not good at sightsinging, never particularly good at singing on my own and the fact that this audition was in front of five or six other people (I was so nervous when I realised people other than the conductor would be there that I never even counted) really didn't help. The conductor said that they only need altos who can sing very loudly and powerfully and that's why they wouldn't be taking me but really, I had sung badly enough that I knew I wasn't going to be taken. Even though I know that choir wasn't a good fit for me though, it's still horrible to be the one rejected instead of the one rejecting. Oh well.
After the week I've had and the effects of my most unwelcome guest still being felt, I am more than ready for this week to be over. But I still have to work tomorrow because I took Tuesday off (because of unwelcome guest being here - even if I did end up sending her packing that day). And what was the annoyance she created for me today? She moved an old suitcase (the kind of square/boxy looking type from the 60s). I knew she had obviously looked in it because what was resting on top of it was put back the wrong way around but this morning, as I was walking round the corner near where it stands, I stubbed my toes really badly. Because she put it back the wrong way around, it was occupying a couple of millimetres more space than usual (lid was to the outside rather than against the wall) and that was enough to put me off my stride/get in the way. Look away now if you're not fond of feet, you may not want to catch a glimpse of the photo down below! Here are a couple of others as illustration of some of what was done on Monday to increase distance between here and pic of bruise.
The (re-created) before. Actually, I realised afterwards that that cable wasn't even there, it was on the window sill. So it was just the books and the adapter. I had left these piled here without putting them onto the shelf below as they are the books I read before and during my move and I haven't yet added them to the list I keep of books I've read.
And this is how it looked when I got home. I'd like to point out that this bookshelf is in my bedroom. The more I think about the fact that she was tidying up stuff in my bedroom the more it annoys me. Whatever about being in there when I was there the evening before...if you are visiting someone and they are not at home, you just do not go into their bedroom at all. You just don't.
Trying to look on the bright side, being rejected by that choir means my weekend is now free and not taken up with two performances, I don't have to spend the money on the summer party planned for after the performance on Sunday and will save a bunch by not having to attend the weekend away in September. I've already checked out the university website (which I should have just done in the first place) and there's a choir or two there that look like feasible options for me. As most choirs here seem to take a break in August it does mean that I'll have to wait until September now, which is a bit annoying. There are worse things to deal with though. And in the meantime, I still do have my local choir to sing with. It might not be very good, but they are definitely more friendly. And positively thrilled to have someone under 60 joining them. :-)
Now, I'm not a great singer. I can hold a tune but I don't have a particularly strong voice and there is just nothing special about my voice. But I do have a lot of years of choir experience under my belt and wasn't really particularly worried about not being accepted. That woman's attitude and a couple of other things that I've noticed and experienced over the last few weeks were working in my mind the whole time that we were rehearsing this evening and I had actually decided that I would graciously decline the option of singing with them after my audition and was coming up with ways to phrase it politely. But as it turned out, I didn't sing well in the audition at all. He also asked me to sing something from the score of what we had been rehearsing this evening but I am not good at sightsinging, never particularly good at singing on my own and the fact that this audition was in front of five or six other people (I was so nervous when I realised people other than the conductor would be there that I never even counted) really didn't help. The conductor said that they only need altos who can sing very loudly and powerfully and that's why they wouldn't be taking me but really, I had sung badly enough that I knew I wasn't going to be taken. Even though I know that choir wasn't a good fit for me though, it's still horrible to be the one rejected instead of the one rejecting. Oh well.
After the week I've had and the effects of my most unwelcome guest still being felt, I am more than ready for this week to be over. But I still have to work tomorrow because I took Tuesday off (because of unwelcome guest being here - even if I did end up sending her packing that day). And what was the annoyance she created for me today? She moved an old suitcase (the kind of square/boxy looking type from the 60s). I knew she had obviously looked in it because what was resting on top of it was put back the wrong way around but this morning, as I was walking round the corner near where it stands, I stubbed my toes really badly. Because she put it back the wrong way around, it was occupying a couple of millimetres more space than usual (lid was to the outside rather than against the wall) and that was enough to put me off my stride/get in the way. Look away now if you're not fond of feet, you may not want to catch a glimpse of the photo down below! Here are a couple of others as illustration of some of what was done on Monday to increase distance between here and pic of bruise.
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The (re-created) before. Actually, I realised afterwards that that cable wasn't even there, it was on the window sill. So it was just the books and the adapter. I had left these piled here without putting them onto the shelf below as they are the books I read before and during my move and I haven't yet added them to the list I keep of books I've read.
And this is how it looked when I got home. I'd like to point out that this bookshelf is in my bedroom. The more I think about the fact that she was tidying up stuff in my bedroom the more it annoys me. Whatever about being in there when I was there the evening before...if you are visiting someone and they are not at home, you just do not go into their bedroom at all. You just don't.
Trying to look on the bright side, being rejected by that choir means my weekend is now free and not taken up with two performances, I don't have to spend the money on the summer party planned for after the performance on Sunday and will save a bunch by not having to attend the weekend away in September. I've already checked out the university website (which I should have just done in the first place) and there's a choir or two there that look like feasible options for me. As most choirs here seem to take a break in August it does mean that I'll have to wait until September now, which is a bit annoying. There are worse things to deal with though. And in the meantime, I still do have my local choir to sing with. It might not be very good, but they are definitely more friendly. And positively thrilled to have someone under 60 joining them. :-)
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| Yep, that's a bruise alright. |
Boundaries. Or, DON'T TOUCH MY STUFF!!!
I've been dithering for a couple of hours about whether to post this but I don't think the person concerned will ever read this and on the whole, even though I have already ranted to let off steam to both my brother and my sister about this, I think writing it down will, as always, also help me to deal with it and, hopefully, put it behind me.
So, short version: former work colleague/kind-of friend came to visit to help me with unpacking/to drive to Ikea maybe. It did not go well.
Much longer version with not a picture to brighten the place up, in which I will also reveal a bit more about what a fucked-up relationship I sometimes have with stuff and "my" space.
The woman in question is very nice really and we worked together, including having friendly chats (not every day or even every week but regularly enough), for just over seven years. Over the last year or two she has also been to my house a couple of times to attend Tupperware parties, and I've been to her house, also to attend a Tupperware party. Apart from that, and my leaving do when I finished up at the company last year, we didn't really have any contact outside work. So, for me that's a friendly colleague, for her, well, I think she thinks we're better friends than we are. Anyway, she did help one evening with painting my old place before I left there and we have always gotten on alright. But we're just not close in my opinion. So it was a bit surprising to get a text message from her not long after I moved asking if I thought I'd be finished unpacking in July or would I like her to come and help out for a day or two, as she'd have holidays. I quite frankly assumed she was angling for a cheap place to stay (judging by my standards again, I really shouldn't do that) and, since the offer of having a car to maybe go to Ikea to pick up anything I needed was also tempting, and just 'cos I'm fairly easygoing about having people to stay (I may not be in future!!!), I said sure, why not.
Last Friday I checked to see if she was still coming and was somewhat taken aback to hear that she was going to leave her place after breakfast on Sunday and stay until after lunch on Thursday. But okay, I really, really did think then that she was just looking for a cheap place to stay and would be out and about and enjoying the area, then maybe helping me a little bit on one or two days. Boy, was I wrong.
She arrived on Sunday afternoon and wanted to immediately get stuck into working. I was kind of expecting that we'd spend the afternoon catching up, having cups of tea/glasses of wine and just sort of chilling out. But no. So I explained to her that the thing I really wanted to get done was to finish painting the bookcases and get all the books onto them. That really is the task that I needed to get done in order to be able to make more progress with unpacking. And I explained that I was unpacking very slowly so that I could declutter a bit while doing so, as I hadn't had time to do much decluttering while packing to move. And I did say that I had to be the one to unpack, as I wanted to be able to know exactly where things were going and so on. Then I said that if we did manage to get finished with the books, maybe we could get the balcony set up nicely, including that trip to Ikea or somewhere similar to buy some furniture. And I thought that would be more than enough to fill a few days. Especially since I also explained to her that apart from the somewhat deliberate way I was going about unpacking, what with the mindfulness and decluttering and all, the other reason it was going slowly was because it has been warm and I keep needing to take breaks to cool down.
So after me explaining all that, I'm still not sure how we ended up moving all the boxes that were in the bedroom (several of which I had only moved in there that morning so that we'd have a bit more space to work in the sitting room) so that we could clean the big cupboard in there. She decided that made more sense because I'd mentioned to her that I used that for material, wool and hobby supplies in general and she felt that would be the quickest win. Only, I wasn't looking for a quick win. It may look like chaos here all the time but I've actually been fairly methodical. And most importantly to me, I have been really working on making sure that I don't repeat the mistakes I made in my last place and that I am dealing with everything properly, from a psychological point of view that is. So, I kind of let myself be railroaded on Sunday afternoon. We did get some useful stuff done, like carrying some stuff up to the attic, where I did push back on her suggestion that we rearrange everything to stack better (since I had done just that very thing the day before and was happy with the way it was). And it was good to get that cupboard cleaned when there were two of us there as it is quite heavy and unwieldy. I would have managed on my own but with two it was definitely easier.
But otherwise, I ended up doing exactly what I didn't want to do, namely, throwing stuff into the cupboard just to get it unpacked. And still ending up with boxes that weren't empty because in every single box there is a layer of books! She amalgamated some of them to being very heavy boxes of books that cannot be moved and by the end of the day we had nine completely empty boxes. Which means that I unpacked about fourteen or fifteen. When my preferred pace has been two or three a day. With two or three a day, I felt like I was really, consciously doing it and fully aware of what was going where, giving myself time to sort things the best way, giving myself time to live with things for a few days before committing fully to that place for that thing (lots of things ended up not being in the right place first time round and this way, I've been able to move things to more optimal situations easily) and, most of all, even though I hadn't realised just how important this step was, I have had time to mentally get to grips with each step and each box and each item in each box. There are plenty of boxes where I've been overwhelmed and just closed it up again and moved on to a different one. And that's okay. Sometimes I've opened up a box three or four times before actually being able to deal with it.
The part I hope I end up finding funny when I look back on this in years to come: I was not so gently hinting that it was time for a break by drawing her attention to the fact that I was sweating buckets. Her reply to my comment on how hot it was and look, this is what I mean when I say the heat really kills me was to say that surely I wasn't going through menopause yet, was I?!! When I said no, it's more because it's 27° and we're doing physcial work, she merely commented that she wasn't sweating so it should be ok. I pointed out that that's because she's not Irish. I guarantee that the majority of Irish people would be having the same reaction as me to moving and working at that temperature. Did you know that an official heatwave in Ireland means there has been five consecutive days of 25° or hotter?
Anyway, shortly after nine on Sunday evening, we called it quits but not before, while I was unpacking in the bedroom I could hear her moving stuff around in the sitting room. I wandered in once or twice and could she her trying to "sort" things. For example, she picked up some large bowls and said something like, "Oh, these belong in the kitchen", whereupon I explained to her that no, they were going to go into the dresser but were sitting on top of the writing desk because it is currently blocking access to the dresser. I firmly told her not to worry, everything that wasn't actually in a box was more or less in the position I wanted it to be, close to it's final storage place. But she still bugged me by continuing to pick up this, that or the other and say things like "You don't need this, it's old, I'll just throw it out". No, you will not throw it out, leave my stuff alone! I'm the one who gets to decide what to throw out WHEN I'M GOOD AND READY!!!!! I found a couple of things that I knew needed to go into the cupboard where I've hung my coats and since that was one small cupboard and I knew it was a bit messy (I also shoved my bicycle basket, helmut and pump in there) I asked her to put these extra things in that cupboard and maybe tidy it up a bit. Thought I'd make her feel useful, less likely to poke around other stuff and get something done that did need doing. And in return I got a comment about how I have hoarding tendencies. Not untrue but the reason she made that comment? I had also shoved a bag of bags into that cupboard. This is one thing that I really did declutter when I moved, partly because I used so many bags moving and clearing out what I did manage to clear out and partly as a decision to get this one thing under control. So I reduced down to one reuseable shopping bag full of other reuseable shopping bags, Ikea bags, small plastic bags....you know that kind of thing. Most people have a drawer or a cupboard or something with a similar pile. I'm actually proud of the fact that I restricted it to one bag full and decided that was more than enough for anything I'd ever need. Her opinion? No-one should have more than three shopping bags. Since she made that comment though I decided, having been more or less silently hating the way the day had turned out and what I was doing, to enlighten her somewhat about my complicated relationship to stuff, partly arising from my past, partly tied up in my struggles with depression (which she was aware of), explain about some of the therapy I've done and the improvements I've made and so on. Thinking it would help. Ha!
We went out for dinner, things pleasant enough and then she asked me what I wanted her to do on Monday while I was at work. I said "What you can do is relax and enjoy yourself, go into town, visit the castle ruins, sure I'll be home by three and we can work on the bookcases then". I told her I'd probably be leaving for work about seven or half-seven as I had a meeting I needed to prepare for. At quarter to seven on Monday morning I was awake but not yet up, having not slept terribly well and feeling generally very unsettled and unhappy after the way Sunday had turned out. And she knocks on the door, "Moonwaves, it's time to get up". Jesus, talk about making me want to roll over and just stay in bed. So fucking annoying. Off I went to work, where I vented a bit to the first person I saw (wasn't intended but I just couldn't hold back). And then a bit to my boss when I was explaining to her that I was going to work my hours on Thursday and Friday this week instead of Tuesday and Wednesday. Heard nothing from her all morning and headed home about half-two. I was just getting off the tram when I got a text from her saying that she had washed all the cupboards (the one small one which did still need doing as well as two others that I had already done, which just needed a quick dusting), fixed the holes in the bookcases (paint got into some of them, making them a tight fit for the yokes you rest the shelves on - but how stupid to do that before the final coat of paint went on?), cleared up the balcony and sorted all the papers together. But not to worry, she didn't throw anything out, just gathered everything neatly.
Let's just say that text had me dreading getting back home. The thing is, yes, things looked really messy but there was a system going. I had important stuff in one place, urgent stuff that it was important not to lose track of somewhere else, and non-urgent, non-important stuff somewhere else again. And now? I have two big piles of papers all put together. Neatly, admittedly. But what the fuck? They are, to a certain extent, private papers. Things like my salary slip, my health insurance stuff, correspondence from the social welfare office. I'm very open with people about just about everything in general but that is not an invitation to do something like that!
As the afternoon went on (so glad she went out for a walk with her dog as it meant I was able to ring my sister to give out) I kept seeing more and more things. Folks, she didn't not touch anything! I'm scared to look in my little box of sex toys as it wasn't quite fully under the bed. If I look in that and everything has been neatly lined up I may end up having to check myself in to a mental clinic. And I am not joking about that. Something like this has happened once or twice before when I was sharing houses but not for a long time and never in MY OWN PLACE. All my own. This is not shared housing. MY HOME!!! Seriously, she seems unable to have anything crooked. One one shelf in my bedroom, on my unread books shelves, only half of it is taken up with books and I have used the front half of it as a bit of a dumping ground. Fine,it's it was a bit messy but I knew what was where, things were where I could get at them and even if a collection of stuff like multi-vitamins, perfume and small nails might not seem to fit together so what? It was all straightened out, the old cards that I am slowly moving out of my purse as I get new ones (as a result of my move) were stacked up together like books. The scissors was neatly lined up with the pinking shears. My mooncup!!!, neatly lined up with the cotton wool. My nightdress, which I had thrown on the bed in the morning, was neatly draped over the end of the bed. The pile of books on the other shelf, which I have read but not yet added to my list of books read this year, was pushed back against the wall - no angles in this house! In went on and on. It seems like there was nothing she didn't get her hands on and I feel so violated. In the bathroom, she'd taken the washing powder and colour catchers out of the bag they were in and placed them neatly beside the full ones, with the bag folded neatly underneath them. Fuck all use to me when I just want to grab the bag and head down to the washing machine with it. Why did she think it was in a bloody bag? My toiletries bag, left open with the small boxes I use for travelling (soap and cloth holders, toothbrush holder): everything neat and straightened, lids on boxes. The lids are left off on purpose - trapping oxygen in there just leads to stale oxygen and smelly containers next time I want to travel. Hint for anyone who didn't already know it: never store empty containers with the lids on. It just went on and on. The one bookshelf I've already put stuff on is one I've planned out for cooking and gardening books on top and choir stuff on the bottom. And even though it wasn't full, I've deliberately not added any other stuff to it. It has its purpose and that's what I want it for. Now? It's chockablock with things that were placed near the cupboards/drawers I actually intended to use for them. But it's all neat and straightened.
My stress levels were really going through the roof and I was kind of starting to be a bit passive agressive, making comments on "oh, you did that, too". I know she meant well but she really, despite me again explaining that I need time to mentally deal with all of the unpacking and sorting, just did not get it. I flat out told her over our late lunch that I was not planning on unpacking any more boxes while she was here, that Sunday was just too much for me. I got on with painting the bookcase and asked her to do the shelves. All fine. Except then I went into the kitchen and noticed the bin had an ordinary plastic bag in it (rather than the bin bags I normally use). Since I'd emptied it just before she arrived, I wondered why she had emptied it again. And my stress was so high at this stage, so many of my triggers already triggered. I had noticed she had thrown out one thing: the empty toilet rolls bags, i.e. the plastic bag that the toilet rolls are sold in. Not at all a big deal to get rid of that, right? Well, no, not really. Except that I had brought the recycling bag down with me on the way to work to empty it (she wanted to do it on the way to dinner on Sunday night and I disagreed as I didn't want to carry the empty bag around with me, to which she replied she would have just thrown the bag out - it's a reusable bag that is still perfectly fine, why would I throw it out?) so I knew those plastic bags weren't in the recycling (I had only just put the empty bag back in place). As a matter of fact, I use those bags as bin liners for the bathroom bin as they happen to be the exact right size. Which is why I had another empty one just thrown into the cleaning basins in the bathroom. I was keeping it to use. I mentioned that to her, explained that I usually used them and asked her if she had thrown anything else out. She said no.
After I had noticed that she had indeed emptied the kitchen bin, however, I couldn't relax. It was another hour or so when I just couldn't stand it anymore and actively started trying to figure out what else she had thrown out. Next up was the washing-up liquid bottle (and again, something that should have been recycled). Now, it was getting near the end, I will admit but I would have gotten at least another week, probably closer to another month out of that bottle. I asked her and she said it was completely empty after she'd wiped down all of the cupboards. Okay, fine. Then I saw that she had moved one carton of eggs into the little holder in the fridge. Now, I'm not one for keeping my eggs in the fridge and since I buy my eggs from the market I always re-use the carton. At that stage I asked her again, what had she thrown out. Nothing, was the reply. People, I am somewhat embarrassed to say that I just couldn't take it anymore and I ended up going down to the big bin, dragging the bag out of it and opening it up to dig through it. I was nearly in tears I was so upset. She claimed to have only brought the bag down because she had seen the lettuce in the fridge (it was stored in a plastic bag), taken the outside leaves off and they smelled a bit because it was so hot. Reasonable enough. Except, if she wasn't having salad for lunch, why was she digging around in the fridge at the lettuce? Why did she feel the need to find the eggs in the cupboard and put them into the fridge? Whatever about being untidy, if I had left the eggs out on the counter I might have understood why she thought I just hadn't gotten around to/hadn't bothered putting them away. But they were put away in the cupboard.
So, digging through the rubbish was not one of my finest hours but you know what? Totally justified because of course, she had thrown other stuff out. Even if some of it stayed in the bin, at least I've now seen it and I can handle it, because I know it's gone. Even if I do prefer to shred envelopes that have my name and address on them. And I was able to fish out a guarantee for a little gizmo (no-one ever needs those guarantees really but you never know. I have a small drawer dedicated to things like that so again, keeps it in bouunds but allows me to be a bit anal about hanging on to maybe-but-probably-not-ever important stuff). And I also recovered the instruction manual for something that I only purchased a couple of weeks ago and haven't yet set up! There were some receipts in there as well although a quick glance was enough to reassure me none I needed to keep. The thing is though, she didn't know that. I can keep receipts for all sorts of stuff to claim on my taxes now that I'm a freelancer and it's my business to go through what receipts I have and decide, not hers. I think after she saw that, however, she started to actually accept that when I was talking about my issues with "stuff", I really do know what the hell I'm talking about.
After making a show of myself (although in my opinion a fairly justified show), I decided to, as it were, take the high road. I apologised for making a scene, explained again that these really are serious issues that I deal with and hugged to show there were no hard feelings. And I cooked a nice dinner and we ate and drank a bottle of wine she had bought earlier. And then watched some Father Ted, as I had been trying to explain my "Feck it, sure it's grand" poster to her and remembered Mrs. Doyle "feck" scene. I still felt invaded but in my head was thinking, when she's gone, I can pull everything out of the cupboard again and start over. I can pull all the stuff off those shelves and get back to where I was before. I suggested to her that the next day (today) we put the books onto the now finished shelves and then go and get balcony furniture and buy some soil while we're at it and then we could spend the afternoon potting plants and enjoying the balcony. Thought that would stop any further issues.
But this morning I just could not make myself get out of bed to face it all again. Woke up several times during the night and just don't feel relaxed or comfy or, well, basically I still just felt like my home had been invaded and violated. After txting a friend about the whole situation and then receiving a phone call from someone else who never fails to make me feel good, I bit the bullet (about half-ten at this stage) and headed into the bathroom. I was in the shower when I noticed the straw that finally broke my camel's back. Last Friday, I bought a two-pack of drain protectors, you know, the little round things you put in the plughole and they stop hair or anything else from going down the drain and clogging it up. That packet was in my bedroom as I hadn't yet gotten around to clearing out the hair that has accumulated since I moved here (I forgot to take the old one with me from the old place). Not anymore though, as yesterday, she obviously opened up that packet and took one out to put in the shower. I really did cry when I saw that. Again, it is such a stupid, silly thing but I feel like she robbed me of a piece of making my home my home. As if I've missed out on a small piece of ritual that would have been another satisfying click of another piece slotting into place in making this place a home. Now, whether I did it or she did it doesn't really matter in the greater scheme of things, really the important thing is that my hair won't be clogging up the drains. But, still. I felt and still feel robbed of that moment. And the sense of violation just washed over me so strongly it left me weak. And so, to end this long and for everyone else boring story: I got dressed, went out to see her where she was sitting on the balcony, told her I had a migraine, was likely to be in bed for two or three days with it and asked her to leave. Not quite the assertive way to do it but I just had to get her out of here.
Even since she has left, I have been prowling around, trying to see what else she's done. Noticed that when she cleared up the stuff on the balcony she threw out the box that I was keeping pots and things in. Okay, it was a fairly beaten up box but now I just have stacks of pots and the tools are shoved into a bucket and have been placed under the barbeque. What happens when I need to use the bucket? Or want to use the barbeque? At this stage, I'm even annoyed that she pulled all the dead bits off my aloe vera plants, something I've been meaning/threatening to do for at least four years. I'm slowly trying to undo what she did but hey, at least two of the bookshelves are finished and I can move forward with the things that I wanted to move forward with. It's going to take me a while to get over this and I've already asked a couple of friends to come and visit soon so that I can clear out her "bad" energy imprint. :-)
So there you have it. Yet more longwinded insight into the fucked-up mess that is my brain and my life. I only seem to be normal sometimes, never actually am.
So, short version: former work colleague/kind-of friend came to visit to help me with unpacking/to drive to Ikea maybe. It did not go well.
Much longer version with not a picture to brighten the place up, in which I will also reveal a bit more about what a fucked-up relationship I sometimes have with stuff and "my" space.
The woman in question is very nice really and we worked together, including having friendly chats (not every day or even every week but regularly enough), for just over seven years. Over the last year or two she has also been to my house a couple of times to attend Tupperware parties, and I've been to her house, also to attend a Tupperware party. Apart from that, and my leaving do when I finished up at the company last year, we didn't really have any contact outside work. So, for me that's a friendly colleague, for her, well, I think she thinks we're better friends than we are. Anyway, she did help one evening with painting my old place before I left there and we have always gotten on alright. But we're just not close in my opinion. So it was a bit surprising to get a text message from her not long after I moved asking if I thought I'd be finished unpacking in July or would I like her to come and help out for a day or two, as she'd have holidays. I quite frankly assumed she was angling for a cheap place to stay (judging by my standards again, I really shouldn't do that) and, since the offer of having a car to maybe go to Ikea to pick up anything I needed was also tempting, and just 'cos I'm fairly easygoing about having people to stay (I may not be in future!!!), I said sure, why not.
Last Friday I checked to see if she was still coming and was somewhat taken aback to hear that she was going to leave her place after breakfast on Sunday and stay until after lunch on Thursday. But okay, I really, really did think then that she was just looking for a cheap place to stay and would be out and about and enjoying the area, then maybe helping me a little bit on one or two days. Boy, was I wrong.
She arrived on Sunday afternoon and wanted to immediately get stuck into working. I was kind of expecting that we'd spend the afternoon catching up, having cups of tea/glasses of wine and just sort of chilling out. But no. So I explained to her that the thing I really wanted to get done was to finish painting the bookcases and get all the books onto them. That really is the task that I needed to get done in order to be able to make more progress with unpacking. And I explained that I was unpacking very slowly so that I could declutter a bit while doing so, as I hadn't had time to do much decluttering while packing to move. And I did say that I had to be the one to unpack, as I wanted to be able to know exactly where things were going and so on. Then I said that if we did manage to get finished with the books, maybe we could get the balcony set up nicely, including that trip to Ikea or somewhere similar to buy some furniture. And I thought that would be more than enough to fill a few days. Especially since I also explained to her that apart from the somewhat deliberate way I was going about unpacking, what with the mindfulness and decluttering and all, the other reason it was going slowly was because it has been warm and I keep needing to take breaks to cool down.
So after me explaining all that, I'm still not sure how we ended up moving all the boxes that were in the bedroom (several of which I had only moved in there that morning so that we'd have a bit more space to work in the sitting room) so that we could clean the big cupboard in there. She decided that made more sense because I'd mentioned to her that I used that for material, wool and hobby supplies in general and she felt that would be the quickest win. Only, I wasn't looking for a quick win. It may look like chaos here all the time but I've actually been fairly methodical. And most importantly to me, I have been really working on making sure that I don't repeat the mistakes I made in my last place and that I am dealing with everything properly, from a psychological point of view that is. So, I kind of let myself be railroaded on Sunday afternoon. We did get some useful stuff done, like carrying some stuff up to the attic, where I did push back on her suggestion that we rearrange everything to stack better (since I had done just that very thing the day before and was happy with the way it was). And it was good to get that cupboard cleaned when there were two of us there as it is quite heavy and unwieldy. I would have managed on my own but with two it was definitely easier.
But otherwise, I ended up doing exactly what I didn't want to do, namely, throwing stuff into the cupboard just to get it unpacked. And still ending up with boxes that weren't empty because in every single box there is a layer of books! She amalgamated some of them to being very heavy boxes of books that cannot be moved and by the end of the day we had nine completely empty boxes. Which means that I unpacked about fourteen or fifteen. When my preferred pace has been two or three a day. With two or three a day, I felt like I was really, consciously doing it and fully aware of what was going where, giving myself time to sort things the best way, giving myself time to live with things for a few days before committing fully to that place for that thing (lots of things ended up not being in the right place first time round and this way, I've been able to move things to more optimal situations easily) and, most of all, even though I hadn't realised just how important this step was, I have had time to mentally get to grips with each step and each box and each item in each box. There are plenty of boxes where I've been overwhelmed and just closed it up again and moved on to a different one. And that's okay. Sometimes I've opened up a box three or four times before actually being able to deal with it.
The part I hope I end up finding funny when I look back on this in years to come: I was not so gently hinting that it was time for a break by drawing her attention to the fact that I was sweating buckets. Her reply to my comment on how hot it was and look, this is what I mean when I say the heat really kills me was to say that surely I wasn't going through menopause yet, was I?!! When I said no, it's more because it's 27° and we're doing physcial work, she merely commented that she wasn't sweating so it should be ok. I pointed out that that's because she's not Irish. I guarantee that the majority of Irish people would be having the same reaction as me to moving and working at that temperature. Did you know that an official heatwave in Ireland means there has been five consecutive days of 25° or hotter?
Anyway, shortly after nine on Sunday evening, we called it quits but not before, while I was unpacking in the bedroom I could hear her moving stuff around in the sitting room. I wandered in once or twice and could she her trying to "sort" things. For example, she picked up some large bowls and said something like, "Oh, these belong in the kitchen", whereupon I explained to her that no, they were going to go into the dresser but were sitting on top of the writing desk because it is currently blocking access to the dresser. I firmly told her not to worry, everything that wasn't actually in a box was more or less in the position I wanted it to be, close to it's final storage place. But she still bugged me by continuing to pick up this, that or the other and say things like "You don't need this, it's old, I'll just throw it out". No, you will not throw it out, leave my stuff alone! I'm the one who gets to decide what to throw out WHEN I'M GOOD AND READY!!!!! I found a couple of things that I knew needed to go into the cupboard where I've hung my coats and since that was one small cupboard and I knew it was a bit messy (I also shoved my bicycle basket, helmut and pump in there) I asked her to put these extra things in that cupboard and maybe tidy it up a bit. Thought I'd make her feel useful, less likely to poke around other stuff and get something done that did need doing. And in return I got a comment about how I have hoarding tendencies. Not untrue but the reason she made that comment? I had also shoved a bag of bags into that cupboard. This is one thing that I really did declutter when I moved, partly because I used so many bags moving and clearing out what I did manage to clear out and partly as a decision to get this one thing under control. So I reduced down to one reuseable shopping bag full of other reuseable shopping bags, Ikea bags, small plastic bags....you know that kind of thing. Most people have a drawer or a cupboard or something with a similar pile. I'm actually proud of the fact that I restricted it to one bag full and decided that was more than enough for anything I'd ever need. Her opinion? No-one should have more than three shopping bags. Since she made that comment though I decided, having been more or less silently hating the way the day had turned out and what I was doing, to enlighten her somewhat about my complicated relationship to stuff, partly arising from my past, partly tied up in my struggles with depression (which she was aware of), explain about some of the therapy I've done and the improvements I've made and so on. Thinking it would help. Ha!
We went out for dinner, things pleasant enough and then she asked me what I wanted her to do on Monday while I was at work. I said "What you can do is relax and enjoy yourself, go into town, visit the castle ruins, sure I'll be home by three and we can work on the bookcases then". I told her I'd probably be leaving for work about seven or half-seven as I had a meeting I needed to prepare for. At quarter to seven on Monday morning I was awake but not yet up, having not slept terribly well and feeling generally very unsettled and unhappy after the way Sunday had turned out. And she knocks on the door, "Moonwaves, it's time to get up". Jesus, talk about making me want to roll over and just stay in bed. So fucking annoying. Off I went to work, where I vented a bit to the first person I saw (wasn't intended but I just couldn't hold back). And then a bit to my boss when I was explaining to her that I was going to work my hours on Thursday and Friday this week instead of Tuesday and Wednesday. Heard nothing from her all morning and headed home about half-two. I was just getting off the tram when I got a text from her saying that she had washed all the cupboards (the one small one which did still need doing as well as two others that I had already done, which just needed a quick dusting), fixed the holes in the bookcases (paint got into some of them, making them a tight fit for the yokes you rest the shelves on - but how stupid to do that before the final coat of paint went on?), cleared up the balcony and sorted all the papers together. But not to worry, she didn't throw anything out, just gathered everything neatly.
Let's just say that text had me dreading getting back home. The thing is, yes, things looked really messy but there was a system going. I had important stuff in one place, urgent stuff that it was important not to lose track of somewhere else, and non-urgent, non-important stuff somewhere else again. And now? I have two big piles of papers all put together. Neatly, admittedly. But what the fuck? They are, to a certain extent, private papers. Things like my salary slip, my health insurance stuff, correspondence from the social welfare office. I'm very open with people about just about everything in general but that is not an invitation to do something like that!
As the afternoon went on (so glad she went out for a walk with her dog as it meant I was able to ring my sister to give out) I kept seeing more and more things. Folks, she didn't not touch anything! I'm scared to look in my little box of sex toys as it wasn't quite fully under the bed. If I look in that and everything has been neatly lined up I may end up having to check myself in to a mental clinic. And I am not joking about that. Something like this has happened once or twice before when I was sharing houses but not for a long time and never in MY OWN PLACE. All my own. This is not shared housing. MY HOME!!! Seriously, she seems unable to have anything crooked. One one shelf in my bedroom, on my unread books shelves, only half of it is taken up with books and I have used the front half of it as a bit of a dumping ground. Fine,
My stress levels were really going through the roof and I was kind of starting to be a bit passive agressive, making comments on "oh, you did that, too". I know she meant well but she really, despite me again explaining that I need time to mentally deal with all of the unpacking and sorting, just did not get it. I flat out told her over our late lunch that I was not planning on unpacking any more boxes while she was here, that Sunday was just too much for me. I got on with painting the bookcase and asked her to do the shelves. All fine. Except then I went into the kitchen and noticed the bin had an ordinary plastic bag in it (rather than the bin bags I normally use). Since I'd emptied it just before she arrived, I wondered why she had emptied it again. And my stress was so high at this stage, so many of my triggers already triggered. I had noticed she had thrown out one thing: the empty toilet rolls bags, i.e. the plastic bag that the toilet rolls are sold in. Not at all a big deal to get rid of that, right? Well, no, not really. Except that I had brought the recycling bag down with me on the way to work to empty it (she wanted to do it on the way to dinner on Sunday night and I disagreed as I didn't want to carry the empty bag around with me, to which she replied she would have just thrown the bag out - it's a reusable bag that is still perfectly fine, why would I throw it out?) so I knew those plastic bags weren't in the recycling (I had only just put the empty bag back in place). As a matter of fact, I use those bags as bin liners for the bathroom bin as they happen to be the exact right size. Which is why I had another empty one just thrown into the cleaning basins in the bathroom. I was keeping it to use. I mentioned that to her, explained that I usually used them and asked her if she had thrown anything else out. She said no.
After I had noticed that she had indeed emptied the kitchen bin, however, I couldn't relax. It was another hour or so when I just couldn't stand it anymore and actively started trying to figure out what else she had thrown out. Next up was the washing-up liquid bottle (and again, something that should have been recycled). Now, it was getting near the end, I will admit but I would have gotten at least another week, probably closer to another month out of that bottle. I asked her and she said it was completely empty after she'd wiped down all of the cupboards. Okay, fine. Then I saw that she had moved one carton of eggs into the little holder in the fridge. Now, I'm not one for keeping my eggs in the fridge and since I buy my eggs from the market I always re-use the carton. At that stage I asked her again, what had she thrown out. Nothing, was the reply. People, I am somewhat embarrassed to say that I just couldn't take it anymore and I ended up going down to the big bin, dragging the bag out of it and opening it up to dig through it. I was nearly in tears I was so upset. She claimed to have only brought the bag down because she had seen the lettuce in the fridge (it was stored in a plastic bag), taken the outside leaves off and they smelled a bit because it was so hot. Reasonable enough. Except, if she wasn't having salad for lunch, why was she digging around in the fridge at the lettuce? Why did she feel the need to find the eggs in the cupboard and put them into the fridge? Whatever about being untidy, if I had left the eggs out on the counter I might have understood why she thought I just hadn't gotten around to/hadn't bothered putting them away. But they were put away in the cupboard.
So, digging through the rubbish was not one of my finest hours but you know what? Totally justified because of course, she had thrown other stuff out. Even if some of it stayed in the bin, at least I've now seen it and I can handle it, because I know it's gone. Even if I do prefer to shred envelopes that have my name and address on them. And I was able to fish out a guarantee for a little gizmo (no-one ever needs those guarantees really but you never know. I have a small drawer dedicated to things like that so again, keeps it in bouunds but allows me to be a bit anal about hanging on to maybe-but-probably-not-ever important stuff). And I also recovered the instruction manual for something that I only purchased a couple of weeks ago and haven't yet set up! There were some receipts in there as well although a quick glance was enough to reassure me none I needed to keep. The thing is though, she didn't know that. I can keep receipts for all sorts of stuff to claim on my taxes now that I'm a freelancer and it's my business to go through what receipts I have and decide, not hers. I think after she saw that, however, she started to actually accept that when I was talking about my issues with "stuff", I really do know what the hell I'm talking about.
After making a show of myself (although in my opinion a fairly justified show), I decided to, as it were, take the high road. I apologised for making a scene, explained again that these really are serious issues that I deal with and hugged to show there were no hard feelings. And I cooked a nice dinner and we ate and drank a bottle of wine she had bought earlier. And then watched some Father Ted, as I had been trying to explain my "Feck it, sure it's grand" poster to her and remembered Mrs. Doyle "feck" scene. I still felt invaded but in my head was thinking, when she's gone, I can pull everything out of the cupboard again and start over. I can pull all the stuff off those shelves and get back to where I was before. I suggested to her that the next day (today) we put the books onto the now finished shelves and then go and get balcony furniture and buy some soil while we're at it and then we could spend the afternoon potting plants and enjoying the balcony. Thought that would stop any further issues.
But this morning I just could not make myself get out of bed to face it all again. Woke up several times during the night and just don't feel relaxed or comfy or, well, basically I still just felt like my home had been invaded and violated. After txting a friend about the whole situation and then receiving a phone call from someone else who never fails to make me feel good, I bit the bullet (about half-ten at this stage) and headed into the bathroom. I was in the shower when I noticed the straw that finally broke my camel's back. Last Friday, I bought a two-pack of drain protectors, you know, the little round things you put in the plughole and they stop hair or anything else from going down the drain and clogging it up. That packet was in my bedroom as I hadn't yet gotten around to clearing out the hair that has accumulated since I moved here (I forgot to take the old one with me from the old place). Not anymore though, as yesterday, she obviously opened up that packet and took one out to put in the shower. I really did cry when I saw that. Again, it is such a stupid, silly thing but I feel like she robbed me of a piece of making my home my home. As if I've missed out on a small piece of ritual that would have been another satisfying click of another piece slotting into place in making this place a home. Now, whether I did it or she did it doesn't really matter in the greater scheme of things, really the important thing is that my hair won't be clogging up the drains. But, still. I felt and still feel robbed of that moment. And the sense of violation just washed over me so strongly it left me weak. And so, to end this long and for everyone else boring story: I got dressed, went out to see her where she was sitting on the balcony, told her I had a migraine, was likely to be in bed for two or three days with it and asked her to leave. Not quite the assertive way to do it but I just had to get her out of here.
Even since she has left, I have been prowling around, trying to see what else she's done. Noticed that when she cleared up the stuff on the balcony she threw out the box that I was keeping pots and things in. Okay, it was a fairly beaten up box but now I just have stacks of pots and the tools are shoved into a bucket and have been placed under the barbeque. What happens when I need to use the bucket? Or want to use the barbeque? At this stage, I'm even annoyed that she pulled all the dead bits off my aloe vera plants, something I've been meaning/threatening to do for at least four years. I'm slowly trying to undo what she did but hey, at least two of the bookshelves are finished and I can move forward with the things that I wanted to move forward with. It's going to take me a while to get over this and I've already asked a couple of friends to come and visit soon so that I can clear out her "bad" energy imprint. :-)
So there you have it. Yet more longwinded insight into the fucked-up mess that is my brain and my life. I only seem to be normal sometimes, never actually am.
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House and home
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