back in town

Yep, here were are.  Unbelievably, I did do a couple of loads of laundry after we got home.  We were both too wound up to go straight to bed, so I put the time to good use.

It was my birthday today.  SO has promised to take me on a shopping trip when I feel better (since finishing the last round of antibiotics, the symptoms have returned. Sigh.) so I’ll make sure to take him up on that.  I got calls and messages from various friends, and a stiff, formal text from my mother, referring to me as “Petrona”.  I only ever get called my full name when I’m in trouble, so clearly she’s still annoyed at me.  Oh well, if she doesn’t want to talk to the person who she spawned 32 years ago, that’s her business.  I’ve realised that it doesn’t matter what I do with my mum; we’re never going to have the relationship we could have had, if she had stayed on antidepressants.  It’s sad, but when she was on them, she was more relaxed, and didn’t carry on like a three year old throwing a tantrum.  Since she came off them, our relationship has been more difficult.  But what can you do?! Not a lot.  So I just have to accept it.

SO and I went to his dad and stepmum’s for a BBQ dinner tonight.  They gave me some birthday presents, a card, and some money, and we gave them a shirt (for SO’s dad) and a pashmina (for his stepmum) which we picked up in Singapore.  Luckily they both loved them! I love buying presents people really like.  It makes me feel all warm inside.

Tomorrow night we’re going to G and V’s house.  As a result, I spent this afternoon making coffee meringue things.  I’d never made them before, but Mum has made them for years, so I know they taste divine.  They were fiddly though, I’ve never used a piping bag before, and I hope I won’t use one again for a long time.  The professionals make it look easy, but jeez, the kitchen ended up with uncooked meringue from one end to the other.  I even managed to get some in my hair.  However, they appear to have worked, even though I didn’t manage to dissolve the raw sugar properly, so that’s a relief.  Now all we need to do is pick up a bottle of champagne, and we’re set for an evening of great food, wonderful friends, and alcohol.  Woohoo!

second-last day

We leave Singapore tomorrow.  This makes me both sad and happy.  Sad, because I’m going to miss shopping, having the rooms cleaned for us, eating out for every meal, and Chinatown.  Happy, because I’ll be back in my own bed, in my own house, with my own little garden to watch over. 

Also, we go back to assorted family shit.  This is less than inspiring.  My mother is being difficult, as is SO’s mother.  Still, it would be unreasonable to expect them to change after more than 50 years, I guess.

We fly out at 8pm Singapore time tomorrow night, and get back to Perth just after midnight on the 30th.  I’d love to go home and do a couple of loads of laundry, but I suspect I’m not going to be that diligent in reality.

well here we are…

… in rainy Singapore.  We got in Monday morning, after a less than restful flight.  As a result, we spent the majority of Monday sleeping and eating.  The food here in Singapore is almost universally divine.

Yesterday we spent most of the day wandering around Little India.  We ended up spending a fair bit of time at the Mustafa Centre, the bargain-basement mall which sells everything from seafood to electronics.  We ended up buying SO a pair of shorts and four shirts, all for less than about $80 Singaporean, which is probably still under $100 AUD (yes, the exchange rate is not in our favour).  For dinner last night, we discovered the joys of Chinatown, cheap food, and persuasive tailors on every corner. (“We make nice suit for you!”)

We’ve found a few things out since we’ve been here:

1.  We keep getting mistaken for Britains (“You from England?” “Um, no….”.

2.  When we explain we’re from Australia, the universal response is, “Ah, Sydney!” “Um, no….”

However, we’re having a great time, everyone seems very friendly (two people helped us out when they noticed us trying to get our bearings), and we’re eating like kings.

Tomorrow we’re going to have high tea at Equinox, the highest restaurant in Singapore.  On the 70th floor of a hotel, the views of the city are spectacular.  I can’t wait.

To you and your loved ones, may Christmas 2008 be safe and happy.

sigh.

I was back at the doctor’s this morning.  After finishing my last lot of antibiotics, I never really went back to feeling 100%.  Normally my physical health is pretty good on a day to day basis, but I’ve been feeling extremely tired, sore throat, my glands have been up, and my eyeballs have been achy.  Anyhow, I thought I’d go back to the quack and see if there’s anything he could give me, in case it got worse while we’re on holidays and unable to see a doctor.  Well, turns out I have a sinus infection.  Back on the antibiotics for me!

I can’t remember the last Christmas where I didn’t have something wrong, either mentally or physically, or as in the case of last year, a double whammy – uncontrolled depression and a lung infection.  (Yes, it was one fucked up Christmas season for me, thanks for asking.)  Still, I’m starting the antibiotics today, and while I do feel very ordinary, it’s not completely flattening me.  Yet.

As per usual, work has been beyond flat out.  It seems hard to believe that I now have a couple of weeks away from it.  I’m looking forward to it, I have to say.  I don’t know if I’m really cut out for full time work.  My brain and my body both seem to be struggling with it.  Still, things may be looking very different once I feel better in myself, so I’m not going to brood on it.

any help is much appreciated

I love my job.  And at times, I hate it.

I love being able to help people.  I seem to have a strong natural ability to read people.  I can tell if they’re lying, genuine, hiding something, if there’s more to the story. I can feel compassion for just about anybody.  I also know that there’s no black and white, only shades of grey.  This makes it easy to help sort out interpersonal issues, which is my job.

On the other hand, I’m an introvert.  (For those of you who are familiar with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, I’m an INFJ - another reference is here).  I love listening to, and helping people, but it exhausts me. It’s a paradox.

Today I spent all day listening to people, all of whom had problems of varying magnitudes.  When I’m listening, I am an active listener.  I ask questions, I watch body language, I seek out details that the person may have glossed over accidentally or intentionally, I take notes.  I don’t notice it at the time, but afterwards, I feel like a light bulb that’s been producing huge amounts of light and heat, which has been switched off.  I feel drained, and my brain is normally teeming with the different issues raised, and the best way to approach them.

So yes, I spent pretty much all of today doing this.  I’m tired.  I can see how people can burn out from this kind of job.  I’m just not sure at this point, how to prevent this huge energy drain that happens.  If you know of any resources which address this, I’d really appreciate a head’s up.

giving thanks

I am so lucky.  I’ve been too badly depressed to enjoy the last two Christmases.  As my birthday is at the end of December, that means my last two birthdays have been pretty traumatic as well.  This includes my 30th, which passed like a blur.

Anyhow, two Christmases and two birthdays have been written off to the black dog.  And here I am, 6 months of 40mgs of Lexapro per day later, about to go overseas, and really looking forward to it.  I’m doing stuff again, feeling motivated, thinking clearly both at work and outside of work.  My self-esteem is slowly creeping back, and I’m actually looking forward to stuff again.  I never thought I’d do that again, to be honest.  It seems like a miracle.

I choose to do stuff other than sleep.  I see my friends.  I interact with work colleagues.  I laugh, and I cry when there’s a reason to, and not otherwise.  I feel capable of handling life and its vagaries.  I enjoy challenges.  Getting out of bed is no longer one of them.

Australians don’t have thanksgiving, but I am giving thanks right now for getting my mental health back.

saturday

Another busy day.  Three loads of laundry, two bathrooms and toilets cleaned, a filthy kitchen scoured from top to bottom, plus the sheets changed.  And all before noon!

Predictably, this wore me out, so I then had a two-hour nap.  When I woke up, SO had done the food shopping and actually made lunch.  This is on a par with hell freezing over, so I was delighted.  We even ate fruit afterwards. 

We are on a health kick, effective as of today.  Last night when we were getting ready for dinner at the restaurant, SO was going to wear a tie…. until he realised that none of his dress shirts do up around his neck any more.  So we’re eating proper food (like tonight, we had grilled fish and vegies for dinner, rather than cereal) and exercising.  We went for a 50-minute walk tonight, and it incorporated hills.  We were both puffing and blowing, but we did it. 

I hope it continues.  We both need to live a healthier lifestyle.  And we both need to lose weight.  Especially me – I’m getting to the point where my size-16 pants are getting tight.  This is completely ridiculous.  So yes, we will be welcoming sprouts and salads into our lives from now on.  Not quite sure what this means for our Singapore trip, though.  I said to SO that all it means is that we’ll need to do a lot of sight-seeing and walking around, which should be fine.

’tis the season to eat too much

Another flat out week.  I’ve had more people crying in my office this week than I have had in the last couple of months.  (It’s actually my job to sort out people’s work-related problems.  Yay for an interesting but frustrating job, hey?)

It’s been a blur, really.  I had training on one day, which wiped that day out for anything else.  In fact, it wiped me out, too.  I came home and fell asleep instantaneously.  I also had a number of meetings with various people, which, while it’s an integral part of my job, prevented me from getting paperwork stuff off my ‘to do’ list.   Still, it’s gone very quickly, and it’s now a week closer to our holiday.  Woohoo!

We had our Christmas dinner celebration with my mum and brother, and Mum’s boyfriend, last night.  It was at a swanky restaurant, with Mum picking up the tab (always a bonus).  We ate, drank, and enjoyed ourselves.  It was really lovely.  It was also the first time SO had met Mum’s BF.  I asked him what he thought, and he agreed with me; he’s a really nice guy.  Definitely a step up from Mother’s previous choices.

Yes, it’s early in December to be having a Christmas dinner with family, but my brother flies out to Japan next week, so it was really the last chance with everyone in the country to get together.  And it was very enjoyable. Despite the fact both SO and I had also been out to Christmas lunches for work earlier in the day, we still ate plenty and had the energy to have fun.

Other than work and Christmas functions, not a lot has really been happening this week.   Three evenings out of five, I’ve come home and fallen asleep.  I suspect I’m still not really recovered from this infection; I’ve had a nasty throat which doesn’t seem to be really improving, and I’m more that normally tired.  However, there doesn’t seem to be anything that the medical profession can do that hasn’t been tried, so I’m just going to take it easy and see how it goes.  Maybe I should even try the whole clean-living, fruit and vegies thing.

We’re slowly getting ready for our trip to Singapore.  As we leave in a week or so, that’s probably a good thing.  Both our passports are organised.  I just need to finalise our travel insurance.  This is fiddly, as we need medical reports from our specialists to say that we’re not a risk to insure.  I guess I also need to make sure all our laundry is clean for when we pack.  Eh, I’ll worry about that closer to the time.

investment ocd

It’s funny that, even though I’m about to turn 32, I keep discovering more about myself over time.  The latest discovery is this: I need a project.

I’ve mentioned this in past posts, but it’s becoming more evident to me on a daily basis that I need something to keep my brain occupied.  Work isn’t enough, and in any case, I try not to mentally ‘bring it home’ with me.  I have my tomatoes and the rest of the garden, but I can’t do a lot in relation to that at night, which is when I get restless.  I love knitting, but it’s not enough mental stimulation.

I brought this up with SO a couple of weeks ago.  I was like, ‘I need a project.  I need your help to come up with something.’  So we sat there while he suggested different things (including the above), and I rejected the suggestions.  After a while we just sat there in silence.  I said to him, ‘I know, I’ve thought of something!’

He said (with relief), ‘Great! What?’

‘We need to buy another property.’

This was not met with the positive affirmation I’d been hoping for.

I do love property.  I love doing the sums to see if we can afford it.  I love finding a revolting place and negotiating for it.  I love running around to organise settlement.  I love dealing with our mortgage broker.  I love renovating, and I love scouting around and furnishing a unit for less than $1000 including white goods.  Finally, I love the process of having viewings and getting tenants installed.  It’s interesting, you always learn something, and it’s financially rewarding (eventually).

weekend stuff

I ended up having a pretty good weekend.  I felt better (yay!) and got a fair bit of stuff done.  I even cooked dinner both nights, a major accomplishment.

I went shopping on Saturday, buying a few more bits and pieces for the Christmas appeal, and also picking up a couple of things for SO – a pale blue casual shirt, and some ‘lounge pants’ (I call them pyjama pants, but whatever).  He was delighted with them, which was nice.

Sunday I spent most of the day in the garden.  I weeded the front lawn and the front garden beds, and I even sprayed the rogue lawn that had seeded in the garden.  (It’s far too hardy to just be pulled up, it needs chemicals, unfortunately.)  The back lawn and garden still need a fair bit of work, but at least the part the neighbours see is respectable.  In amongst this I did about six loads of washing.

While I was gardening, SO vacuumed the whole house, and gave it a real spring clean.  He even rearranged the furniture in the family room area.  I’m the kind of person who could have it the same way for my whole life and not think about it, but every so often he likes to move things around a bit.  Anyhow I came in from outside, and I was pleasantly surprised by the new configuration.  And also the fact the house had actually been vacuumed.

So yes, a good weekend. 

Being back at work was a funny feeling.  I just came in and put my head down, and before I knew it, it was lunchtime, and then time to leave.  If only every day went so quickly!  I celebrated by coming home and having a three-hour nap.  I woke up at about 9pm, had some food, and now I’m relaxing, waiting for my antibiotic to be absorbed, before I go back to bed.  Yes, I’m shameless about my love of sleep.