Spring again

The work on the house is well underway with the builders having finished the wall and associated work. We are hoping to have the place painted next week but at this stage, rain is predicted for the whole week so that might be interesting!!

We have a new found energy for renovating and general maintenance which has been great - partly because of the feeling of completion we are reaching with our home but also because it is lovely to spend good time with boy. I love spending my days with him and we are doing more together and have more energy than we had a little while ago.

This weekend, we have noticed how much the jasmine and magnolia flowers are in bloom, especially at night, now that it is warming up and we have the windows and doors open. The scent of the sweet flowers wafts through the house on the breeze and reminds us to breathe and enjoy our lives. The smell of Jasmine has always evoked a sense of calm in me, balmy evenings after a hot day, being in the garden feeling the sun on my skin or just relaxing with a book on the porch. Most of all it is about being at home.

Today I am painting again. I woke early after boy went to golf (at an inhuman hour) and did an hour of yoga. I found a website called myyogaonline.com which has a huge range of yoga videos. I have cancelled my membership at the local yoga centre because I havent been able to get there all year - the classes start too soon after work to get there on time. This system helps me practice at home regularly so I am doing much more than I have for a while, and feeling the benefits again already. It is like magic, yoga. It is one of the few things that calms me in a physical sense.

I have finally made a booking to see a psychologist in a few weeks time. I recently asked my gp about it (after making the booking) and he asked me a few questions about why I wanted to seek help. I tried to summarise it but ended up just blathering on for ages without making a lot of sense. It made me realise that I need to give some thought to how I will respond when the psych asks me how she can help. There is so much - where do you start?? The thing that made me decide to look for a psych was a recent period, albeit short, of depression. I have experienced it before but generally move through relatively well. This time though, I felt quite paralysed by it, it was a complete lack of any energy or emotion, except perhaps a sense of loss. I pulled it back together but realised that I can't subject boy to this sort of thing. I have been increasingly angry and upset recently, he tells me that I might have a stronger sense of it than what may come across to others but I feel increasingly unstable in recent months. I have to put a lot of energy into not indulging these tendencies and hope that the psych can help with some more strategies. It may be true that it helps to talk about it with someone who you don't have to censor yourself in front of. It will also be confronting to verbally acknowledge some of these things too.

Onwards and upwards!

building prep!

We are but three days away from the start of building work on the side of the house. We are getting boards replaced on the Eastern side as many are rotting from weather damage. We are getting new windows, window hoods and insulation - doesn't sound that exciting but we are looking forward to this being done a great deal! It has been too many years in the making but we are at long last finally here. It is going to be weird and messy but the outcome will be great. The builder is starting at 6am every morning which will be a challenge for me, I am not an early riser. At least the hairy ones will get morning walks as we try to wake ourselves up in preparation for the day. It will be a few weeks of work that will have enough of an impact on our lives to be disruptive but I am sure we can deal with it like we have with everything else. Boy is ever patient and calm to my chaotic self...

Meanwhile, I am still sick and seem to be getting a flu now rather than just a cold. Just days away from going back to work..

renovating

It has been a busy week of house related activity this week. The weather is noticably warmer after some of the chills from last week so it is certainly more conducive to getting out and active. I have been caulking the gaps between the kitchen floors and repaining the french doors at the front of the house. It has made a huge difference to the front of the house and looks really clean and fresh. I painted the doors white with a charcoal trim so it makes the white really stand out.

It has been nice to settle into the holidays well and we have been out for a few lunches and dinners to remind ourselves that we are actually taking a break. It has been good getting a few things done around the house too though - there is never enough time to get through everything on weekends.

The only irritant today has been the people up the street who are again in band rehearsals, the main problem being that they are absolutely terrible and play really loud. There has been an impromptu meeting of a few neighbours around the street corner to have a bit of a complain, I think we are going to have to become the cranky neighbours who call police, they just never stop - every single day and night they are at it with microphones and amps. You can't escape it by closing windows or putting something on yourself - when did we get to this age?? I was thinking back to when I was a student and I dont think we ever played music so loud that people streets away would hear it (not that we would have had speakers good enough to anyway!!)

Merciful silence, they seem to have stopped for the moment.

August already

Well it has been a long time, I didn't realise how long until I checked my last post - June! I am on holidays for a few weeks at the moment and while I have managed to come down with a touch of the flu/cold, I am enjoying a few weeks at home with boy and the hairy fools. Shiva was spayed last week and the vet told us we need to keep her calm for 14 days, this has proven to be an impossible task but she seems to be doing ok despite her continued exuberance.

It has been an interesting time recently, marked by change and general happiness but certainly pocked with moments of personal madness. It seems that from time to time, without warning, I erupt into a state of emotional chaos. Sometimes it is marked by an intense feeling of anger and other times it is a descent into a deep depression. I have had both recently and while I am attempting to get myself out of it, the old 'black dog' continues to follow me around. I have been seeking out a psychologist to visit, I think it is time. If at 32 I am still not past my past (so to speak) I am not going to get there on my own. It is starting to affect me more and more and as it does, I feel more at the mercy of my emotions. Sometimes it feels almost hormonal, in that it is a rising feeling that can't be connected to any one event in particular. Other times it is easy to see how it starts.

One of the things that bothers me most is that the anger I feel erupts over the smallest of things. I know when it is happening but I am unable to do anything to stop it. I feel like a red heat is pulsing through me and I have taken to running or riding to give it a release. The only other release is to cry (or throw something, which I haven't resorted to with anything beyond the weight of a sponge, which can be equally irritating because sponges don't really have the desired release when they hit the floor...)

The depression is altogether different. I fall into a pit that keeps sucking me in. I have enough energy to get through the day at work but when I finish the day I feel like I have nothing more to give. I feel completely drained at these times and want only to sleep.

At the moment, I feel good. I have been resting a lot over the holidays and despite the recent onset of the cold, am having a good break. I think that some of the problems are that we get into a day to day habit of life. We get up, go to work, come home, cook dinner, watch a dvd and go to bed - day after day. Because we are so tired from work, we dont have the energy to do the things we need to to feel alive. Holidays are so important to remind us of what life is supposed to be like. I am getting out on my bicycle a lot and going for walks. We are seeing bands and going to galleries - we live in such a lovely spot, but sometimes we can't see it for all of our distractions.

When I go back to work, there will be the start of more change. The uni has recently restructured its executive so the person I am working for will have a new portfolio from next year. It will be interesting because I feel like I have just started to find my feet with the work of the office and it is about to change, and I can't envisage quite how it will look in the future. It will still be interesting and I just need to keep riding that wave. The change will be good for the university though and there is a lot of new energy in the place that is making a big difference.

The sun is out today and, while there is a cold breeze, it will be nice to take a deck chair into the garden with the dogs and a good book. I dont know whether I will end up reading the book or just staring into space but either way it will be nice to sit in the sun.