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Shift in emotions
Before I related our loss of Rhianna, I mentioned how I had spent a couple days feeling really good and energetic. It’s a shame it was so short-lived but it seems events conspired against me after that.
We woke on Saturday to the news frenzy surrounding the Paris attacks, The event itself is horrific enough, not to mention over attacks in various parts of the world in the days around it. But then there was the aftermath of people lacking compassion for fellow human beings and being selfish. I sadly must say there are members of my family and friends who fall into this category and it left me very much in despair to know they felt like they did. I ended up in a seething rage for a couple of days. Part of me wanted to carry on but it is an exhausting and painful experience so I decided I had to close it down because I couldn’t sustain those feelings for long.
I didn’t have a plan on how to do this so my mission was to find a way to calm that feeling of rage. I did this by listening to music, disengaging from certain social media websites and doing some breathing exercises and relaxation. It was not necessarily in this order. I think the breathing was the first thing I did because I was feeling pretty stressed out by everything. The other things followed in various ways. I told myself I need to allow my eyes to glaze over and feel nothing when I read something that starts me feeling angry again. For the most part, it worked. I have stayed pretty calm over the past few days. I think my biggest mistake was engaging in discussion online with certain family members that stirred me up to raging feelings. I know better than to go there but I did. I just felt I couldn’t sit idly on the sidelines without making a comment regarding the truth in something posted. It was a mistake and hopefully I won’t go there again.
The whole thing has added to my resolve not to discuss politics or certain current events with certain members of my family. Sadly no good will come of it because we are so opposite in the ways we think about our place in the world. I will admit to feeling a bit of anger at times but I have managed to stay calm instead of losing the plot. Anyway, that has left me with a sadness because I realised I have such different values to so many people in my life. I have maintained some distance from family over the past several days but I will engage with people for Thanksgiving in some way. It’s a bit sooner than I’d have liked but I just have to rise above these feelings and make it work. After all, I at least do have the luxury of having these emotions and dealing with them in the best way I can.
I have many friends who think much more like I do and I take comfort that most of them still think the same way they did years ago when I first knew them. They don’t allow fear to rule them like some people in my family do.
Last Monday also was the birthday of my friend who died of cancer 3.5 years ago, which already made me feel a bit sad.
In addition to the emotional stuff, I also had essentially a toothache due to food continuing to get stuck under my one lower molar. It would become inflamed every time I ate and it was impossible to floss out the stuff that was stuck. I went back to the dentist last week and he replaced a filling on an adjacent tooth then did some work on a couple other things to try to solve the problem. He did an x-ray that showed it all looked quite good so was puzzled as to why it was causing me so much problems. Anyway, it seems the work he did has helped because I haven’t had any more issues since then,
For now, I will hope for some return of that lovely feeling of being really alive and happy and energetic at some point. And I will also hope for some inkling of what set that off because I would like it to happen more often.
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Transformers: Age of Extinction 3D
As a family, we went to see this movie this afternoon. I normally wouldn’t be too bothered to see this in the cinema but this was Lego Lover’s big movie and he really wanted us to all go together. Funnily enough, he never did see the previous installment of the series in the cinema and this time we see it on opening day. That almost didn’t happen as it should due to a curious ad at the Supanova convention last weekend. On entrance we were issued with wristbands of different colors, depending on which sort of ticket we purchased. On the wristband was essentially an ad for this movie and the date of June 27th. Hmm…it all seemed a bit odd to both the Scientist and me, because new release movies generally start on a Thursday here. If there is a change, it’s almost always earlier in the week rather than later. I jokingly commented that perhaps the wristbands were imported from the US. Either I was correct or the convention got wristbands that were meant for use in a different region.
Anyway, Lego Lover has been eagerly awaiting this movie for months. And if not for the release of The Lego Movie a few months ago, it would be his only cinema experience for the year. Until today, we could count his cinema outings on one hand. Today makes six in his fifteen and a half years. Half of those movies have been Transformer movies. All but one of those movies have been with the whole family. Game Fanatic didn’t want to see Toy Story 3 with us so stayed home a few years ago. I would have been perfectly happy to wait for the dvd of this movie to come out, but Lego Lover really wanted us all to go together so that’s what we did. We arrived well in advance of the starting time, partly so we could get discount tickets and partly to make sure we got seats at the time we wanted I needn’t have been concerned about missing out on tickets as the cinema was mostly empty. Perhaps this was due to it being a mid-afternoon showing, before school let out. Â I’m not sure if we were in the same cinema as for the Lego Movie or not. But we had the same experience at the beginning when the ads and previews started to run but no picture. Last time the audience (very small) sat through the whole set of ads and finally I went out to the front to advise of this. Today, the Scientist went up, quite a bit sooner. This seems unlikely to be a coincidence considering the previous time was in April which leaves me wondering what is being neglected at the cinema. I don’t have a problem missing the ads but I imagine the advertisers would.
We got special 3D glasses for the movie instead of just using ones we had from previous movies. The only special part was the small accents on the side of the ear pieces. I guess they might be collector’s items…although more valuable if they hadn’t been used already. :) I had forgotten how very long these movies are so it seemed like it went on for longer than the previous ones. Apparently I have easily forgotten how long the action packed movies are. Plenty of bang for our bucks, to be honest. That’s not to say I didn’t like it. It’s not really the type of movie I go in for, but it did have plenty of entertaining parts. And for those that were less so, it was always interesting to pick out some of the movie cliches typical for an action film. There was even a really cute nod to an interest of Game Fanatic’s included that we all really liked.
Lego Lover, really loved it and was talking non-stop about it with his brother on the way to the car, then to all of us at home, then later on when I took him back out to buy Transformer toys in the toy sale that just started today. It makes me happy that he loved it so much and also happy that he wanted to share it with his whole family. The funny thing is we were talking just today about his extremes of very happy and very unhappy as a younger child. He was never much in the middle until he got older and matured. But today his joy reminded me of his younger days…just pure bliss. And now, of course, he has two new toys in the series and is so pleased with them too.
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The family that gardens together?
Last month we had rain for something like 20-21 day of the month, which is far exceeds our normal September rainfall. Our grass in the backyard grew higher and higher and I despaired as I wasn’t able to go out and mow. Eventually it grew tall enough that mowing was going to have to wait until it had been trimmed down a bit.
We had some dry and sunny days last week but I found myself down and out with more allergies/cold and tonsillitis until early this week. Â Fortunately vertigo wasn’t involved this time but I was pretty knocked out again. Twice in a month…
Anyway, I finally came out of the haze and felt well enough on Monday. The weather was also in agreement so I bought some new grass clippers and a set of hedge shears and pruners. The grass clippers were the expensive type but worked a lot better for my left handed use than the last set I bought. Just for that alone I think they were worth. The Scientist and I went out into the back yard and tried out the tools. The grass clippers were really a bit too slow for the amount we needed. The Scientist pulled out the line trimmer and managed to cut a lot of the tall grass down. Then it came down to mostly pulling the grass out by hand that was most effective. I was still using the clipper for some place but most of it was weedy winter grass.
We were making a bit of progress but time was short and rain was expected again on Tuesday. I joked that I should get the boys out to help us and then did just that. Normally I would get some fairly negative responses to such a request but both Game Fanatic and Lego Lover came out without argument and started helping. After about an hour of work, we had managed to clear out a huge area, leaving mostly outer areas of the garden to be dealt with later.
It was rather nice having all of us out there working towards a goal and getting a bit of enjoyment from it too. I really appreciated the help the boys gave and mostly appreciated how willingly they joined in.
I’m under no illusion this will become a regular thing but I do hope we can join together in this way again when the need arises.
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How to reduce a bank balance in a few easy steps…
The last time I saw my grandmother was ten years ago. Our family spent a month in Texas at my parents’ house and my grandmother and one of her sisters joined us for a week of that time. Lego Lover was just a toddler at the time and has no recollection of it, of course. Game Fanatic does have some vague memories but even he was only six at the time. My grandmother is now 88 years old and suffers from kidney disease as a long term complication of diabetes. Her vision is extremely poor and limits her ability to do her crossword puzzles and read. Her quality of life is not very good. I wasn’t expecting her to be alive much longer when she decided last year that she was going to stop her dialysis treatments. The idea of going home to see her was brought up but I didn’t really know how long she’d survive without treatment. So I didn’t go and I had resigned myself to the fact I wouldn’t see her again. When the time comes, I won’t be going back for her funeral because I don’t see the point of the time and expense to see someone who has died. As it turns out, she either didn’t stop the treatments or she changed her mind. She is still alive and reasonably well, considering her condition.
Through a rather unimportant chain of events, the notion of going back to see her again was again raised. If I went, it wouldn’t be a family holiday and would be limited to just me, and possibly, Lego Lover. Decisions had to be made so many discussion were had and I eventually decided I would go and that Lego Lover would also go. Originally, he hadn’t been interested in going but he changed his mind. I spent the next several days making enquiries with travel agents and researching online fares. Initially my plans were to go in late July but I eventually found I could save over $1000 by going in May or June. Qantas Airlines has a huge sale on right now and I found my best fares on their website after much playing around with various dates. This is a huge surprise because they’ve usually be significantly more costly than flying Air New Zealand (and their associate alliance). Anyway, we leave early morning on May 29th and will be back in Perth on July 1st.
So the money has just been leaving the bank account lately. The main cost is obviously the air fare to get from here to Texas. After much searching and frustration at finding air fares and a car rental for Pennsylvania, we decided we would drive instead. The potential car rental was the deal-breaker as it was going to be as much as one or more tickets in the end. So we will have a long drive (to western PA) but I figure it will be a good way to see more of the country for all of us. With stops it’s going to take over a day of driving but even if we opt to stay some place overnight, it will be a major savings from air travel. Lego Lover needed a new US passport so we organised that last week and it arrived a couple of days ago. My Australian passport expired in January so today I spent another couple hundred to renew that and should have it in a couple of weeks. I still have to organise travel insurance for the duration, which is looking like another $200-300 or more, depending on which company we use. There will obviously be other incidentals over the next few weeks to add to everything so far.
I’m quite looking forward to our trip but the idea of travelling with just Lego Lover is very overwhelming. I expect to be dealing with difficult situations on various occasions…mostly situations that I don’t currently anticipate. As it is, we are already dealing with more challenging behavior from him than is usual. Obviously we will get through it so the best I can do is to plan for known issues and hope for the best on those unexpected ones.
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Psycho cat
My parents divorced a couple years ago and my mom has been living in an apartment alone the last couple of years. Last year she decided she would like a companion and adopted a kitten from a litter. Her kitten of choice was the one that didn’t claw her and seemed most loving.
On the second day she had this kitten, he bit her, apparently quite hard, because it was enough to cause her to cry. Over the last year, the cat has bitten her so many times she has scars on her leg. She knew she needed to get rid of this cat but she had grown too attached.
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Blogging absence
Seems I’ve not been able to blog for one reason or another lately. Mostly, I’ve not felt terribly inspired but hopefully that will change soon. I think maybe it’s a matter of just sitting down and writing a bit.
Life’s going pretty well at the moment. We still have the issue that turned our lives upside down a while back to be resolved. It’s out of our hands right now and it’s really just a matter of time. It’s not affecting us so much on a daily basis but the resolution will be a good thing.
We are at the start of our winter here and it’s been pretty wet so far. I’ve been working on a crocheted afghan I started a couple years ago for Lego Lover. He’s no longer interested in this particular project but I’d like to finish it before starting something new. I had a bit of a spurt today and got through about three small balls of yarn. It’s going to be a very imperfect project because I seem to have lost stitches on one side over several rows but it will be unique and will just be for home anyway. With the cold, wet weather, I should be more motivated to keep going but mostly I’ve been working on it while the Game Fanatic is at Dungeons and Dragon’s on alternating Sundays. Today, I broke out of the rut and worked on it in the evening while we were playing the Zelda game for the Wii that we got a year and a half ago. I quit mainly due to tiredness and soreness from the repetitive motion.
I’m not sure if it’s weather-related but I seem to have acquired lots of aches and pains lately. I’ve had some instability with both my kneecaps and now my shoulder is hurting again. The other sort of arthritic pains have also reappeared.
This past week, we saw my mother-in-law off on a holiday. She will be leaving on a cruise this evening from England for over week, I think. It’s her first cruise so I hope she has a great time. Afterwards she will be visiting her sister for a few months. We also welcomed back my father-in-law, who has been in Sri Lanka for some time. I had a chance to chat with him at length when we went to visit and he was very chatty compared to usual.
I was going to write more but I’m not feeling particularly well at the moment so will try to save my thoughts for more regular posts.
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Long time, no writing
I’ve been rather negligent on the writing the last week or so. Our family has been going through a bit of a crisis the last ten days and I haven’t been able to put thoughts down. Emotionally, I think it’s been the hardest week we’ve ever been through. The situation is not gone, but it’s not looking so terrible now.
I keep thinking about the way stress affects us in so many aspects of our lives. A certain amount of stress is good for us but when we overload our systems, we don’t function. Usually, when I am stressed, I tend to eat. I usually crave chocolate and lots of it. This time, it didn’t happen that way. I was actually coping reasonably well the first few days and was able to support the scientist, who is the one directly affected. By the weekend, my defenses had crumbled and I was sinking into emotional valleys and pulling myself partially out, only to go down again. It was almost like being drowned by the weight of the stress, I suppose. The last couple of days, I found it hard to function so that I wasn’t eating or sleeping well. I lost about four kilograms from my lack of appetite. I wasn’t really there for the kids. Thankfully, they have done quite well and saved us more stress and anxiety. Right now the worst part is probably over so we are functioning again and able to carry on more of a normal daily life.
The serious stress was fairly short-term but I wonder how people manage this on a long -term basis. How does one not go completely nuts? Of course, sometimes they do. We made the mistake of not sharing with many others the difficulties we were going through. We had some good reasons for this,  but we missed out on a lot of support that could have buoyed us through some of the worst of it. We finally did share and it was so much better even though nothing particular had changed at that point. Our family and friends have been absolutely wonderful and we won’t forget that. It’s not that they can “do” anything but they are there for us. That feeling that you aren’t alone anymore makes a major difference and that’s what counts most.
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Too long between posts…
It’s kind of crazy that I got this website set up for this blog and haven’t been posting. For some reason, I’ve just been busy in a way that it’s been hard to stop and write a bit. It’s nearing the end of Mother’s Day here and I will be off to bed soon. It’s been a pretty good day and the kids were both very good today. The kids fed me buckwheat pancakes and maple syrup for breakfast in bed early today. Lunch was with the scientist’s family at his mum’s house. We had pizza, salad and too much chocolate stuff…We were back home by mid-afternoon so we just hung out with each other most of that time. The Scientist went to bed hours ago and Lego Lover has just gone to sleep. The poor guy seems to have a cold right now and is pretty stuffed up. I have to give him credit because normally he is frustrated and angry when sick, but today he has been pretty quiet. I wonder if the medication he’s been on for over six weeks is finally having some effect. It’s still too early to tell. The Game Fanatic has now also just gone off to bed.
I spoke to my mom for almost an hour and a half tonight. Unfortunately my first attempt didn’t work because she couldn’t hear me. The second attempt was better but she still had trouble. After a while, it just got to be too difficult to carry on a conversation so we left it there. She seems in good spirits right now, which pleases me because she’s been going through some rough times for quite a while. I think maybe she has turned a corner and is feeling better about the world.
No, it was not a bad day at all…
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Slow motion
This afternoon we had lunch at my MIL’s house with all the family present. My MIL made a delicious spread with meat and vegetarian curries along with roasted chicken and beef stew for the non-curry loving members of the family. I ate way too much but the potatoes were just too hard to resist.
Afterwards, I spent a long time trying to assist my sister-in-law to set up a sale listing on ebay. She was terribly distressed a couple days ago because it was overwhelming her so I offered to help her out today. She is trying to sell her daughter’s Irish dance dress so that they can buy another dress for competition at a higher level. Unfortunately, the computer there was really messed up and it was impossible to get anything done. So I brought all the details home to get it listed from here.
We were all outside when my SIL left in one car with two of her children and her nephew. As she pulled out of the driveway, a bush next to it must have caught onto the front bumper and in slow motion peeled most of it off. It looked almost like paper being ripped. We’re not sure why she didn’t stop earlier but I suspect she didn’t realise what was happening to the bumper until part of it was visible. Inside the car it may have sounded differently to outside. Needless to say, she was in a bit of shock and embarassment afterwards. Fortunately, with various family members assisting, the bumper was able to be put on well enough to get the car home.
I spoke with her later to check on a couple details for her listing. I think she was a bit better and she said she’d had a good cry once she got home. She’s had a rough week so hopefully next week will go a lot better.
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Stirring up dust
We had a family lunch at my mother-in-law’s house yesterday. BIL #2, who lives at the house with his wife, brought home a new desktop computer on Friday but hasn’t set it up because he doesn’t have a desk or table for it. So the Scientist offered an old metal one at our house to use and he is going to come to pick it up today. The difficulty of this offer was that the desk was pretty much buried under all sorts of stuff that had been stored in the same area. The Scientist has spent the last couple hours unearthing forgotten items, much of it junk. But he did get it cleared out and the desk has been removed. Now he’s in the process of putting it all back. Actually, much of it has been transferred to our recycle bin, and some has been thrown out. So the volume is considerably smaller. It should look a lot tidier once he is complete. I had to leave due to the massive amount of dust floating around.