stroppywenchnikki

We have moved, and we are now mostly unpacked in the new place.The internet only just got connected yesterday (Monday), but there seems to be issues with both the internet and the home phone line- the phone line worked when they set it up, but stopped working a couple of hours later and they tell us it might be a week before they can send someone out to look at it.

If you have been seeing any news from Australia/Queensland, you will
have seen the news on the flooding and the declaration of the whole
area of South-East Queensland and Northern New South Wales as a
natural disaster area. The flooding was extensive, as over the course of a week of heavy rains, the two worst day had well over 300 cms of rain each! Our place is on top of a hill, and we suffered no damage whatsoever. Our street was extensively flooded, with sections of road washed away. The street was closed down for a few days so we were stranded- Sean's Mom was here for coffee and got stuck for three days! But for us it was just fun, while for the others it was thousands and thousands of dollars of damage to each household, as many had flooded up to 3-4 feet.

Once the rains stopped, it only took a day for the flood to subside in
out neighbourhood- our place backs onto a river, which was able to
wash away the worst of it once it stopped falling from the sky.

There are large parts of the area still using boats to travel from
house to house though.

Click the link below and then when it opens up, click where it says
"Wild weather" for some photos taken in the last two weeks in my area.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/photos/2009/05/20/2575851.htm

Anyway- I'd best get back to the last of the unpacking. I will email as
appropriate once the phone line is fixed so those who need it can get
the new number- since this is the first time we will have had an actual
phone in years, we will be able to call and talk more often- it gets crazy
expensive to call overseas on our mobile phones.

Ain't so sunshine-y anymore.

I think I've lost myself somewhere in this past year. Either that or dealing with life and the things that are affecting those I love has simply drained me of lifeforce. I've always been a "glass half full" sort of person- someone who was always able to be patient to wait, because things always get better with time, right? No matter how rough my day, I always went to bed knowing things would be a little better tomorrow.

I cannot remember the last time I went to bed looking forward to a new day. Most nights I don't care whether or not I wake up.

I get out of bed, and some days I can't find the will to shower. Some days I cannot be bothered to brush my hair. Life is too much a bother. I'm too busy un-willingly playing Mommy to everyone around me- because I have to. Because if I didn't, their lives would be worsened. In at least one case, they'd probably decide not to live anymore at all.

I used to be strong. Now I'm just a shell. Empty. I've actually stopped believing that things will improve. They've been so fucked for so long, despite my best efforts to right them, and with future circumstance being what they are, they won't get better anytime soon. And I'm out of energy to care anymore.

This is not a cry for help. It's not a goodbye note. I don't have the energy to top myself, either.

I have been breaking myself into small pieces and packaging them out to people in my life that need help, and accidentally I've given too much. And there are so many people that need my help right now. My niece is here for a few more months, and her mom has just come out of the hospital after major surgery. She's hurting and missing home, and a little fragile. I have a friend and her teen son here because she had a crazy ex who was abusive, so they are here indefinitely licking their wounds. And my husband is shadowed by the depression demon. Husband number two, depression number two. My batting average is just not that great.

All I want is for someone to take care of me. I've been self sufficient almost my entire life. I'm the caregiver. But I think I'm broken. So few people in my life have needed less from me then they have given. Funny to think of it, but Paula was probably the best Daddy I've ever had. One of the few dynamics in my life that never required me to give a mountain of emotions.

So who has the superglue, then? I could use some.

My husband's Dr recently changed his depression medication. So on Monday, he hit the big breakdown I have been expecting for months now- maybe closer to a year. And off to the Emergency Department we went.

Hospitals are obviously not a happy place- even if you are not depressed. To their credit, once past the admitting red tape, we only had to wait about 20-30 minutes to see a psychiatrist. The hospital nearest us is in a low-rent area, so the waiting room was full of the usual poverty-striken crowds- a guy being treated for addiction, a teen mother with her gaggle of half-dressed children, and another ranting that no one had given her a voucher for a free taxi home,and so on. I also think that tuning the TV to medical drama soap operas in a waiting room is generally a bad idea. But maybe that's just me. Since we had never been to this hospital before, I first had to go through the process of getting his registered as a new patient.

"Can I help you"?

Me;"Yes- my husband is being treated for depression- he was on Effexor but they have just swapped him to Pristiq, and he's had a breakdown and needs to see a psychiatrist"

"Where is your husband?"

Me; "He's the full grown man man sitting on the floor behind me curled up into a ball crying and sobbing so loud you have to shout at me"

"Well, what's wrong with him?"

Me "He is having a breakdown and needs to see a psychiatrist"

"But what is wrong with him right at this particular moment?"

Me; "He is unable to speak or function in any manner, and he wants to die- now get me a damned psychiatrist"

"Is he aggressive?"

Me; "No, he is not aggressive- he is just... broken. Please help"

After a few more minutes of this, ~I~ wound up getting aggressive, at which point a supervisor come along, took one look at us and directed us to go sit down and she would send a psychiatrist out to collect us shortly.


A while later they discharged him to go home, after a counselling session wherein they decided the best thing for him was to maintain his routine and not disrupt things too much. Which would have been fine, except that on Tuesday, I had to pack him onto a plane to go back to work- at a mine site 4000 km's from here, in the middle of a big fucking dessert with no Dr's on site, only a nurse.And then the fucker forgets to check in with me at night. He called today to tell me he was to tired to talk and fell asleep right away, and to say that he had texted- the texts still have not shown up. He sounds more together. But I won't feel comfortable until he is back in my arms alive and breathing.

I'm so scared. I wish i could fix him. Then again, I tried to fix my first husband too and could not help- he got better only after we were no longer together. Go figure, huh? I'm one of the strongest and most cheerful people I know, and yet, I keep making my men depressed.



And on to other news';

We've listed our home, finally. it goes to auction on May 1st- this is a good thing. it's too small, it costs too much, and it keeps us financially tied to his father, from whom we wish to distance ourselves. So now I have 10 days to make the place view-able. Which will entail renting a storage unit, boxing up and storing everything that is not absolutely essential, clean the place top to bottom, and do a few handyman bits around the place (Re-install a cupboard, paint, etc).

Last weekend we drove to a darling friend of our's property, 5 miles into the outback, and left at her place our two large friendly-to-the-point-of -possibly-being-irritating dogs. The place absolutely echoes now in their absence.




And with all this stuff ahead of me to do, today it is raining so hard that I have decided the best thing for me is to curl up in bed with a book.

Whore your mind
for the good of the
establishment.
Swallow your distaste.
Like so much stale beer.
Turn a blind eye as the spawn of the boss
skims from the corporate account.
To feed his demon.
His eyes red with the hue of despiration.
Plod through another day in this
corp o ration
night mare.
Don't look up, or someone might see
the revusion in your gaze.
Don't open your mouth, or someone might hear
The bitter scorn in your tone.
Don't listen to the whispers in the lunchroom
or you might become
an accomplice
to this
raging machine.

About a month and a half ago my husband and I joined a gym.

I'm a big chick, and I have never been bothered by my weight. Overall, I'm fairly healthy, though inactive. I rarely get sick, and even when I do, my immune system works in overdrive- I have healing powers like wolverine! Yearly physicals revesl great colestrol, normal blood pressure and overal goodness. My first husband pushed me alot to lose weight, which did nothing except piss me off and make me stubborn. My current has never pushed me- because he is happy if I'm happy.

But he was not happy. Depressed and without energy for anything, he needed an outlet. And I knew it. He was a big child, and then in the early 2000's, he suddenly decided he'd had enough and dropped alot of weight. Over the past few years hes slowly gained, and it bothers him.He still sees himself as a fat child when the reality is he is an average man, not fat. Just inactive.

And so we joined a gym. I hoped that with both of us joining, we could motivate each other and therby not be able to flake on the couch each night with the excuse of wanting to spend time together. The gym has a pool, and I've always enjoyed swimming, so I envisioned myself swimming while Sean weight trained.

I have to stress, exersice was not something I defined as fun. I am shocked, therefore at what has transpired. For the first three weeks, I begged off some days, finding trivial excuses to stay home. So I went to the gym 3 or 4 days a week. But rationed that it was better then nothing. I was bored with the pool. I had tried the nightly aquasize class, and found most teachers sucked. Mondays morning class teacher was great, so I'd find myself going to her classes no matter how was feeling.

Ay week 4, I was well and truly bored and undermotivated. I popped in on saturday for a swim to find the pool closed for an event. So I went to the gym instead, rode the bike and cooled down on a treadmill.

Click.

Ten minutes in, hot and sticky, with my thigh muscles burning, I was feeling fantastic. Three weeks on from this discovery and my attendance has gone up to 5-6 days a week, and I'm the one whining at Sean and draging him physically out of the house to go to the gym. I am absolutely addicted. The crappiest sort of day at work, no desire to do anything but crawl into bed, and I know if I get myself into the bike, in 15 minutes I'll be feeling like sunshine is coming out of my ass.

Three weeks later, and my energy levels have shot through the roof. I'm ready to take on anything, and feel super accomplished. I cannot gush enough. My ten minute bike ride and ten minute cool down of the first day has morphed into a 7 km bike ride (8 kms twice a week), followed by half a km of rowing, and 1.5 km treadmill cooldown. Another week of this and I'll have boosted the rower to one km and then will add the evil looking cross trainer machine into the mix. I think that the wee after that, I will also throw in a weights based routine once or twice a week as well.

We've done nothing different in the diet field- we eat a varied healthy range already, with our problem being portion size rather then wrong food choices. But even this is righting itself- for reasons unfathomable to me, I find myself eating smaller portions as I feel full faster. This does not make and sense to me whatsoever- if anything, I expected to be hungrier.

Last week, I noticed my pants are lose and I have to leep hauling them up. Yesterday I bought a new pair of track pants and two tank tops. All items had to be bought in one size smaller then I've been wearing.

And so it begins.

I hope you never lose your sense of wonder
You get your fill to eat
But always keep that hunger
May you never take one single breath for granted
God forbid love ever leave you empty handed
I hope you still feel small
When you stand by the ocean
Whenever one door closes, I hope one more opens
Promise me you'll give faith a fighting chance

And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance
I hope you dance
I hope you dance
Exerpt from Lee Ann Womack's "I Hope You Dance"



We stumbled upon this statue, Dancing Bear (by Pauta Saila) when wandering through Ottawa a couple of years ago. He is the first piece of public art from Nunavut in the far north to be displayed in Canada's capital city.

The Inuit people of the Canadian Arctic use the Dancing Bear as a recurring art theme, typically in soapstone carvings much smaller then this one. The polar bear is top of the food chain, the ruler of his environment, and feared by all. Because of this, it is considered a great honour, and a very desirable thing to come back as a polar bear in the next life. And the Dancing Bear is seen to be just that- a person's soul re-incarnated as King of the World, and understanably quite happy about it.

Today, I feel like Dancing Bear.

I'm writing here again as a means to drag myself out of the funk I have been smothered by for a few months. But it's time to uncurl myself from my safe little warm ball and venture out into the land of the living once more.

I've largely been frustrated with some things in our life which are completely fixable, but which have gone unattended to because my husband, whom I adore utterly and completely, is sometimes a twit:)

I am being unfair, of course. My husband as Asperger's, and it makes him see life in a very different sort of way. When things are out of control, he just does not function at all...wherein I (and most people, I think), feel the need to wrestle control back, he just gets overwhelmed and refuses to deal with it as though the problem did not exist at all.

We're financially struggling. We have not yet paid off the big trip(18 months ago we travelled around the world), as the credit cards are still full and the bills are absolutely crushing us. We decided months ago to re-finance the house, pull out the equity and use it to clear the bills and start fresh. He's so scared that they will say no to re-finance that he is dragging his heels and being slow to do everything. There are documents he need to gather and such that he keeps "forgetting". For months. Despite daily reminders. It is ENRAGING me to the point that I want to throttle him somedays! I think we have everything ready now, and we will get the papers to the mortgage broker this week. Finally.

I have no intention of making this blog a place to bitch about him- this will be the ony entry in which I will focus on this...but I also need to clarify where my head is at right now- mostly because I feel for the first time in a long time that I am in a good place again. It's all dark and dusty in the corners of my head, and I've spent too much time in there lately with the cobwebs. And recently I had the sudden realization that none of this is his fault. I've been focussed too much on the nit-picky things.

It is partly because I am so far away from MY friends, MY family. I moved here in 2004 after meeting him on the net, and hauled up everything I knew, packed my life into three very large suitcases and boarded a plane. Everyone we have here are OUR friends. So naturally, when the thousand of little things that crop up in a relationship bother me, I've ben sitting on it. I don't want to complain about the petty things to OUR friends.

But, if I had MY friends here, I would bitch about stuff, we would laugh about it, drink a bottle of wine and it would be over and forgotten, instead of me thinking and overthinking,dwelling on it until it grows. Just little issues, miniscule daily routine passing things getting blown out of proportion till they seem like big issues. Once I made that connection, everything got much sunshine-y-er in my head.

And the really big, overwhelming things about him? Are the good things. The patience that is without end, the willingness to go along with my randomness, the ability to deal with the crazyness of a woman with PMS, the astuteness to know exactly when to kiss me, exactly when to tickle me till I strugle not to pee myself, exactly when to surprise me with a bottle of bubbles and a blowing wand.

I've never met a man quite like him. I never even knew such creatures exsisted.

And so, If I have to drag him, kicking and screaming into reality till he gets his shit sorted, then he'd best hang on tight, cause it will be a bumpy ride.

Life....here we come again.