TToT (about apples, sleep, Misha etc.)

   I feel like writing another gratitude list on here rather than just in my diary, and as part of it, I’m participating in the Ten Things of Thankful linky. In no particular order as always. 

1.    Misha. Currently, Misha is sleeping on my bed, curled up in a little ball and seemingly very content with his life right now. That makes me very happy because he seemed a bit off earlier this week. I’m not sure if he actually was or if I was being hypervigilant as I often am in regards to Misha, but he wasn’t much interested in his snacks and isolated himself a lot, while now he’s decidedly more cheerful, if mostly very anxious but that’s pretty much the norm unfortunately. I check on him every now and then, more for my own benefit than him really needing regular supervision during sleep lol, and I seriously wish I could make a close-up recording of all those cute sounds coming out of him – his sleepy purrs, his fluttery heartbeat, all the funny gurgling sounds in his tummy, his gentle breath and little “Hhrrru?”’s when he stretches in his sleep – and show y’all, but I don’t think any of my devices would be able to pick up such mini sounds. 
2. My room. Today I feel especially grateful for having a room which I don’t have to share with anyone (except for Misha obviously, I always tell him it’s his room too because he doesn’t have his own, but who would mind Misha?) because later this weekend I’ll have to lend it to my parents’ guests. Late last summer, my Mum invited her acquaintance – my aunt’s sister-in-law who really likes my Mum – to come over to us for a weekend. Back then she slept in my parents’ room, and they slept in the camper. She was really appreciative of how my Mum hosted her, so appreciative, it seems, that she wants to come again, this time with her husband, who normally works in France, but for a shorter time. Except this time round we don’t have the camper because it’s having some sort of maintenance stuff or such done, so they’ll have to sleep here and Bibielz will sleep with Sofi in her mini room). I can’t say I don’t mind, because I do (even though her husband is called Jacek), but this makes me even more appreciative of having a room just for myself the vast majority of the time. And aside from simply being my own room, it’s also a really cool room, so I’m sure they’ll like it here. Perhaps so much that they’ll come for another weekend sleepover in two months’ time. 😀 
3. Going back to horse riding. I don’t know when exactly I’ll go yet, but I know I want to do it again. It may be the worst sport for me given my abilities (or lack thereof actually) and both mental and physical health situation, but it’s the only one I actually like, and I miss it despite the anxiety that has always been associated with it for me. I miss the stable and my regular horse and my instructor, and I want to give it a go again. Perhaps less ambitiously than before and more hippo therapeutically after all, but I really do. But the ultimate thing that actually made me make this decision was something else, which I won’t write about now but probably will quite soon. 
4. My fazas and generally my faza life. The past year or so, my faza life has been very… well, weird, chaotic, tumultuous… I don’t really want to get into the details, plus it wouldn’t be fitting for this particular post because it would take up most of it, and I don’t really have enough distance to it to be able to write about it publicly like that at this point, but things have been really weird and a little confusing sometimes I’d say, and both good and bad. But this week has been pretty good faza-wise, if very intense, and I wonder if perhaps things won’t be becoming more stable from now on. I’d quite like that finally. 😀 ANyway, I got a massive peak on Gwil this week totally out of nowhere, and you regular people on here know that a peak is a great thing and works like the best natural antidepressant for me, so having a peak means I’m doing really well mood wise. No spectacular highs like peaks cause sometimes, just a serene, calm sort of happy feeling. 
5. My Apple Watch. My Apple Watch may not be the most useful of my devices like my iPhone or Mac or PlexTalk, it doesn’t really bring anything extremely new to my life or its quality or whatever, but I just like it. This week I attempted to sleep with it for several nights to see how accurate its sleep tracking is, in particular sleep stages. I didn’t expect much because I didn’t believe a device like that could be reliable at all in tracking something as elusive as sleep, and because my Mum was saying it didn’t work too well and seemed very random to her, and claimed that it can only track your sleep during the scheduled sleep time, so if your alarm goes off and you’ll just turn it off and go back to sleep it won’t notice it. Well, my experience with sleep tracking seems to be better than my Mum’s. As far as I can tell, it’s oddly accurate. It knows very well more or less when I fall asleep, even if I fall asleep before my scheduled sleep time starts, and it knows quite precisely when I wake up, and it’s not because I use the Apple Watch right when I wake up, because even when I do check the time when I wake up I usually do it on the PlexTalk out of sheer habit. I obviously can’t objectively verify the accuracy of the sleep stages thing, but again, as far as I can tell, it’s pretty good. Like last night I kept waking all the freaking time and felt like I was sleeping very lightly, it did show that my sleep was very fragmented and I got only half an hour of deep sleep. After I let Misha out at half past four and went back to bed, I remember having a lot of dreams and Apple Watch said I kept switching between REM and core sleep pretty much til I woke up at almost 11 AM, and I remember having a very vivid dream right before I woke up and woke up with a raging headache, and Apple Watch says I woke up from REM sleep. Apparently it’s a thing to get headaches when you suddenly wake up from REM sleep like that. Also because I fell asleep at half past two last night and then didn’t really get the best quality sleep, I still felt very sleepy by the time my alarm went off at 8. I tried to snooze it, but must have done something differently than I originally wanted because Apple Watch turned off the alarm completely, while still staying in sleep mode and it knew that I was sleeping. So my Mum was definitely not right that it will only log sleep during the schedule, although I guess Apple Watches are still unaware of such a thing as naps. So yeah, overall I’m quite positively surprised and, who knows, maybe I’ll end up sleeping with my Apple Watch every night, after all. Not that knowing the sleep stages gives me anything really, but it can be just good to know. I’m also very curious if it’ll notice anything weird during my sleep paralysis. I already had it once with the Apple Watch on, but it was past my set sleep time schedule and I didn’t know yet that you can prolong it like I did today, so it wasn’t tracking my sleep. It was very helpful though because as I was in sleep paralysis, at some point I got an email, so my Apple Watch vibrated and I woke up. Which, while we’re at it, makes me also very grateful to the email sender, although I don’t remember who that was anymore. 😀 
6.    Speaking of Apple – apple pie! 😀 – My Mum made one last weekend and we ate it during the week, but we couldn’t eat it all so in the end Mum had to freeze it. It was very yummy though. 
7. And speaking of sleep, that dream I had earlier this week. That was really ridiculously hilarious. And yes, I find myself really liking the name Helenor. The next gem stone I get is going to be named Helenor (for all the new people here, I give names that I like to my gem stones because I don’t plan on having children and even if I did, many of the names I like are unusable for children). 
8. My fluffy overalls that I got from Mum a couple years ago. She made them for me and they’re very warm and comfy and I love wearing them when it’s relatively cool weather like it’s been recently. 

Noticeable Welsh progress this week. I wonder if it isn’t the aforementioned faza peak doing this to me, because I haven’t really been doing anything any different than last week or the week before. The power of peaks. 😂 Anyway, I really appreciate it because while my Norwegian learning has been mostly a stroll in the park because of Swedish, Welsh, with all the related excitement and my feelings for it, has been quite an uphill struggle compared with my other languages, so even the smallest leaps of progress are very much valued by Bibielz. And Welsh-language music. Even now I’m listening to Blas Folk Radio Cymru and I’m really grateful that there are ways for people like me who live someplace completely different to also discover music in minority languages. 

1. Chips for lunch yesterday. Mum was trying some new experimental recipe for chips, which didn’t sound all that good to me from the beginning, and eventually we both agreed that they turned out quite crappy, but then my Mum made «normal» chips, and these, as always, were very good. Good chips always deserve appreciation. 

   So, that’s my gratitude list. How about your thankfuls? What nice things have happened to you this week? 🙂 

TToT (Misha, Traditional Latin Mass, pillows, etc.)

   I thought that today is a good day for writing a gratitude list. I always try to include things that I’m thankful for at least once a week  when writing in my personal diary, but I think I haven’t written a grateful blog post in quite a while and I feel like it today. I’m linking up with Ten Things of Thankful. 

1.    The fact that I’m feeling well physically. My family – that is Sofi, Dad and Olek – have been mildly sick with something and while it isn’t serious, no fever or anything, it seems to be dragging on for quite a while, especially for Sofi. So far, I’ve been spared. Jack the Ripper is visiting me this week and I had two migraines, but overall I’m feeling well. 
2.    Misha spending a lot of time with me, particularly at nights. Misha has recently taken a particular liking for my armchair and sleeps at night either there, or on my bed as usual. I always love it when Misha sleeps with me, his mere presence instantly creates such a pleasant, peaceful, Mishful atmosphere. But this week I’ve been particularly appreciative of it as I’ve had some yucky dreams and night time anxiety, and waking up in such Mishful atmosphere makes things so much easier. 
3.    That I’ll probably soon be able to get a new cable for my scanner. I haven’t been scanning anything for a long time, because it’s such a huge hassle and difficult to do well on my own. But now that I’m attending Traditional Latin Mass, I sorely feel the lack of quality Catholic books in accessible formats, especially older ones, and feel almmost envious of my Mum who keeps buying herself all kinds of such books. They are very useful for prayer, reflection or even simple reading as a form of deepening your faith, and I always have to go looking for things like that on the Internet, which in the end means that what I find won’t necessarily be traditionalist at all. I have always struggled with focusing during prayer, and not having materials to help me out and help my mind go in the right direction makes it even more difficult sometimes. Even the missal that I have in epub is a lot shorter than the one my Mum has as a physical book, and I’m limited here anyway because I can’t just take my Braille-Sense with the missal with me to church like all the other people take their books because that would be super unpractical, I have to read it before the Mass at home. So my Mum has wanted to help me out and scan at least some of her huge collection of these “saintly books” as she collectively calls them for short, but then we couldn’t find the power cable for the scanner absolutely anywhere, and it appears to be such a niche cable that it can’t be replaced with just any average cable. So Mum phoned the company that distributes those scanners and asked if there’s any way of getting another cable or something, and they said that next time they’ll be ordering from the company that produces those scanners which is in the UK, they’ll order a cable for Bibielz as well. So Bibielz can’t wait for it and for all them saintly books. 
4.    Speaking of TLM, I still feel so incredibly grateful to God every time I think about it, that we’ve been able to become part of the Catholic Tradition and attend this beautiful Mass and generally change our lives thanks to this. It will soon be a year since we “converted” as my Mum puts it and Mum and Sofi and me often reflect on how much things have changed for us since then, not even only spiritually but generally in how we think, and laugh at the difference sometimes. 

   My pillows. Yeah I always love my pillows, but today is a good day for being grateful for them because I have new pillowcases. Not for the regular, big pillows, but two smaller ones, one of which I put on top of my big pillow when I sleep and keep my PlexTalk  under it, and the other is for all kinds of unexpected needs and situations and for Misha when he wants to sleep in the bed rather than on it as he usually does. And then I also have three larger, additional pillows just in case, haha, but that’s not relevant here. Anyway, the pillowcases I had on the two, smaller pillows got badly torn as I had them for ages, and before I got some new pillowcases for these  pillows, for some time I slept without an additional pillow and that sucked because I’m totally not used to it – my Dad only sleeps on one, flat pillow and now I’m not surprised he has sleep apnea, I think it wouldn’t take long for me to develop it sleeping like that all the time – so then I got a different pillow, which was bulkier than the one I usually put on top of my regular pillow, so then in turn it felt way too high, and it muffled my PlexTalk quite effectively. So I was really happy and relieved when I finally got brand new pillowcases  and could sleep with my actual pillow. The right or wrong pillow can really make a huge change. 😀 

1.    That I can be helpful for my Mum with her iPhone. I really like it when I can be helpful for people, and while my Mum likes her iPhone and says that it is indeed a lot more comfortable than any of her previous Android phones, she also needs a bit of help or a tip on how to do something with it quite regularly. Even if I don’t know how to do something, it looks like it’s easier to research it for me than for Mum. Perhaps because I always automatically do it in English and there’s more info on most topics in English online. Funnily enough, since last week, she’s been saying that perhaps she’d like to buy herself an Apple Watch, because it would make it easier for her to take calls when out and about and she hopes it would be better for measuring how many kilometres she runs and bikes. I think it’s funny at what pace we’re becoming the Apple family. 😀 I am very seriously planning to sway Dad to the Apple camp by the end of next year as well, just cus why not? Olek will be all alone with a Samsung. 😀 I know it’s beyond my abilities to convince Olek as his choice is fully conscious and informed, and because of that I wouldn’t even want to change it as it wouldn’t make too much sense. I already told Dad how Apple has CarPlay and that seems to have appealed to him as a lorry driver. 
2.    doing relatively well mentally. July and August were awful for me with loads of what I call sensory anxiety for the purpose of this blog, which was going up and downn a lot and which was mostly caused by an unusual amount of sleep paralysis episodes that I had at that time and that they also were quite unusually intense and long, so that things felt quite out of control and I had a hard time functioning normally. Lately things have calmed down significantly and for long enough that I think I can say this month has been better, even despite horrid dreams and anxiety at night afterwards that I had earlier this week. 
3.    Lots of yummy fruit. We still have raspberries in our garden! They haven’t been very sweet this year, but are still good, and it’s always nice to have home-grown raspberries rather than have to buy them from someone/somewhere else. We also have loads of pears, more than we can eat, in fact, so Mum is making some sort of mousse from themm or something. We also have a lot of apples (as befits the Apple family lol). And even blueberries, though these aren’t home-grown, Mum just bought a lot of them a while back to freeze. So we eat a lot of fruits and it’s really nice that we can do it. 
4.    Chilly weather, which is chilly and cosy enough for me to be able to wear my fluffy overalls in the evenings again. For me that always means that autumn has properly started. 😀 
5.    My language progress. It hasn’t felt like anything huge, but I’m always grateful even for a very little bit that my brain absorbs. Also what I feel particularly happy about, and what is particularly tangible for me, is that because of my Norwegian learning, I can feel my Swedish strengthening significantly as well. I was kind of worried it would be the oppposite and that I’d end up having a jumble of the two and would regret my silly out-of-the-blue affair with Norwegian. I’m so glad that it’s not the case, as well as that, for that matter, my relationship with Norwegian has definitely become a steady one by now, as we’ve been together for over a year now. 

   How about you, lovely people? What are you grateful for this week? How has it been for you overall? 🙂 

Ten Things of Thankful.

I thought it’s time to do some gratitude list post, as I haven’t done it in a while. As usual with such posts, I’m linking up with

Ten Things of Thankful (TToT).

1.    That my immediate family are more or less healthy again. We had a wave of Covid going  through our house in the last couple of weeks and we suspect we all might have been sick with it, to a varying degree. My parents certainly were, and it was them who were particularly badly ill. I was especially worried about my Mum, who has episodic asthma, and has been in the midst of an episode when it hit her, so she had really awful cough, but was also generally quite unwell with awful muscle pains and stuff. Thankfully, my Dad is completely well now and back to work, and my Mum is a lot better. She still can’t feel smells or tastes and has worse cough than her usual asthma cough, but other than that she says she’s feeling well and it shows. I’m really glad this is over, as it was quite depressing having a mini hospital at home, and like I said quite worrying at times.
   1. 1. 1. Good sleep last night. My sleep has been very up and down lately, and yesterday I had quite an awful anxiety day. It took me ages to settle down to sleep and I was really scared to fall asleep, but when I eventually did fall asleep I got solid ten hours of it and didn’t even wake up all the time as is usual when I’m having bad anxiety.
2. Mum’s help. I’ve been having a lot of stuff to do this week – some Christmas shopping, writing and sending cards to people, some banking stuff etc. – and my Mum helped me with it all, which I am the more grateful for given that she’s still recovering. I’ve got a HUUUUGE collection of English-language cards that my Mum stocked up on for me years ago so that I can send them to people abroad, as I only send cards to people abroad at this point. That card collection is also something I’m grateful for, so that I don’t have to worry every single year whether I’ll be able to find the right cards for people in the shops but just pick something from my overflowing box. 😀 Christmas shopping is also so much easier for me with my Mum because I’m terrible with money and stuff like that, even when shopping online. Not to mention banking. 😀
3. Lots of snow. We’ve been having a lot of snow since the end of November. Well, not like A LOT, but surprisingly much for this time, we usually don’t get proper, fluffy snow that would stay around for a longer time until about Christmas. And this early snow has been very fluffy so you can make snowballs and snowmen and whatever you want from it. We’d been in quarantine and now Sofi’s school has their classes online because a few teachers are sick, so Sofi’s really happy with the snow and we both play in it together with Jocky, and Jack Frost haha. It also means that I can wear my comfy fluffy overalls in the evenings that my Mum’s made for me for Christmas a few years ago, and it’s the season for tea with ginger and other amazing things like that. Tomorrow, provided that Sofi won’t lose interest, we’re going to make gingerbreads.
4. Misha. I am grateful for Misha’s existence each and every day, even though today I haven’t even seen him yet because in the morning he played with Sofi and now no one knows where he’s sleeping.
5. Tasting Christmas food. My Mum’s made a start to making all our traditional Christmas dishes, but because her sense of taste is non-functioning at the moment, it’s been quite challenging for her. Thus, Sofi and I kindly offered our help with the gustatory part. It was mostly meant to be for our current benefit – so that we get to taste all the Christmas food before Christmas actually comes – but now I’m really glad we thought about this because otherwise some of the dishes would be really quite insipid haha. I mean, Mum said she seasoned everything but it must’ve been some truly minuscule amounts. I really hope Mum’s senses go back to normal until Christmas so she can actually enjoy Christmas food.
6. Medication. I’m grateful for having pain killers, as well as my migraine and anxiety medicines available. I had a migraine on Monday, which was pretty shitty, but I’m sure it would be even shittier if I didn’t have the migraine meds. And like I said I also had quite high anxiety yesterday. I’m absolutely used to dealing with anxiety with no meds, as that’s what I did for most of my life until I got my diagnoses, and I still try to take my PRN med only when things get really bad because it’s Xanax (except it has a different name here) so it’s highly addictive. It only takes the edge off it most of the time, but that’s still a very welcome difference and I’m extremely grateful for that, as at least it helps me to focus on and see other things in life beyond my little Bibiel brain bubble.
7. My little Bluetooth speaker. Well, I’ve had it for over a year now and I’ve always loved it, but the reason why I mention it in this gratitude list specifically is that recently, for some mysterious reasons, it had stopped working for me. Basically, this speaker always gets a little freaky when I get a phone call, like it doesn’t know what to do about it. Sometimes its volume will go all the way up and it will play the ringer sound at the same time when my phone’s already playing it (best way to be woken up at night, and wake up everyone else), or it’ll turn off and never turn back on or anything when I finish the call. Sometimes when I answer the call I’ll hear it through the speaker, other times through the phone. So overall it’s just very unpredictable in how it behaves with phone calls and I don’t really know why, but normally I don’t care much because I don’t talk to people on the phone much. And earlier this week, I was listening to music when Sofi called me, and I heard a very weird popping sound from the speaker and then it turned off. I talked with Sofi, and wanted to turn the speaker back on when we finished the call, but it just made that popping sound again and wouldn’t play despite it looked like it was on. I tried to reset it but again it would only pop when I turned it off and on, and nothing beyond that, despite several trials, literally nothing I came up with seemed to help. I was really disappointed because it’s a really good speaker and I’ve been really happy with it so far. It has a smooth, bedroom-y sound, which is what I was looking for because I mostly wanted a speaker that I could listen to music from at night, but at the same time, unlike most speakers specifically branded as bedroom speakers, it sounds very clear even at relatively low volumes, and very neat when you turn it up as well. Also everyone says that it fits my room aesthetically for some reason. And my Mum always says she envies me it, which I totally understand, haha. And it’s from B&O which are known to make good devices overall so I wouldn’t have expected that this speaker would have such a short life or be so prone to serious malfunction, especially given its price, and I also have headphones from B&O so I was wondering if I should also prepare for their time to come soon. I was planning to get in touch with B&O somehow, but in the meantime my speaker was totally useless. Then yesterday I tried to turn it on once again, and, surprise! it worked! I’ve no idea what was wrong with it but now it works completely fine. I even got Sofi to call me again while I had it connected to my phone and it didn’t freak out. I’m really glad to have a functioning speaker again, and now I appreciate it even more that I don’t have to rely on the iPhone’s built-in and rather unfriendly-sounding speaker all the time. 😀
8. That we have the possibility to attend traditional Latin Mass every week. I recently wrote about our discovering and kind of “conversion” to traditional Catholicism, and you can read about that here.  I am also grateful for all the resources that help me develop my faith and for all the grace that God gives me to make it possible for me to do so.
9. My language-learning progress. This week has been rather low-key in this department, but I’ve been listening to a lot of Norwegian podcasts and have become a lot more confident when it comes to my listening skills in this language. I have also learnt some interesting new Welsh words. Fun fact for y’all: there’s such a word in the Welsh language as clusfeinio (klis-VAY-nee-aw in the North or klees-VAY-nee-aw in the South though I’m never quite sure how to represent Welsh sounds in English phonetically) which means to listen attentively, as well as to eavesdrop. I think it’s cool that there’s a language in this world that has a special word for the particularly attentive kind of eavesdropping, as this is something I do a lot. People-watching, blind edition.

What are your thankfuls this week? 🙂

Ten Things of Thankful.

How are you people doing? Thought I’d do a bit of a gratitude list, linking up with

Ten Things of Thankful – #TToT –

just because it’s Sunday. Not that Sundays are my favourite day of the week or anything – they never have – but just because I feel like it and because any time is good to be grateful.

1.    That my new-ish migraine medication is kind of working. Some of you may recall that I was recently writing that I was free from migraines for quite an impressive amount of time – three weeks. – Well, and then I got a period, and the bliss appears to be over, because after my period went away, I already had two migraines. However, not long before that break, I was prescribed a new med by my GP, which would hopefully work better than the previous one and that I can also take in combination with the other one. I didn’t have an opportunity to test it though until this week. And it’s a bit curious because, while it by no means got rid of either of those two migraines, it did help enough that I could function somehow, and not just sleep or try to sleep my life away. The one I’ve been taking so far would either get rid of the migraine entirely sometimes, or other times not change the situation at all, it seemed to be very random. Still, we’ll see how it goes in the coming weeks, I guess. But so far, I’m grateful that, this week, it worked at least somehow, and that I’m not having a migraine today.
2.    My faza developing beautifully and my current faza subject. My faza peak has gone down somewhat, but it’s normal, and so far it’s still a peak and doing quite well as such, and even without a peak, having a major faza is always such a fabulous thing! I wish I knew more about him than I do but oh well, maybe I still will over time… In this respect, this is probably the most difficult faza I’ve had, but at least I’m developing my deductive skills, or something… Oh yeah and I’d like to squeeze in all my pleasant and positive synaesthetic experiences in here, which I’m also very grateful for.
3.    And, speaking of the faza and brain stuff, my Welsh language development. Lately it’s been feeling quite speedy. Well, maybe not as miraculously, spectacularly speedy as it was with my Swedish or English, but still. Recently I had my first dream where parts of it were in Welsh, and I’d been waiting for this for such a long time, because, you know, when you’re starting to dream in a language you’re learning, it shows that your brain is really processing it intensely and you’re actually absorbing it, and on the other hand that it’s already ingrained enough that it can even come out of your subconscious. And it’s just fun to be able to dream in yet another language. I was really waiting for it a long time because it was slowly starting to get boring to only dream in Polish, English and Swedish, as much as I’m crazy for these languages, I need more diversity. It probably needs time until Welsh will appear in my dreams regularly, and in that dream there were only like snippets of it, but it’s a great start, isn’t it? As you may know, I needed to limit my Welsh learning quite a lot last year because I had a lot of tech transitions and familiarising myself with new technology to do, so I only restarted my intensive learning this year. And I just love that feeling that I always get on Mondays after learning (Mondays are my most intensive days when I introduce new material, which can take up to 3 hours and then I work on it for the rest of the week about half an hour daily), when all my brain muscles are pleasantly sore and steaming and twitching in a total mix of languages. During this past year I kind of forgot how very satisfying and addictive this feeling can be. No space left for overthinking or anything like that. It can be quite difficult sometimes when I’m particularly depressed to get myself going, but once I do, it actually will often help me to feel better. Plus this year so far has been really pretty decent moodwise to begin with for me, as you may already know. And now with a brand new faza in the mix I have twice as much motivation, inspiration and various opportunities to further develop my language skills and they kind of do it on their own.
4.    Podpiwek. Podpiwek is a Polish fermented soft drink made of grain coffee, hops, yeast, water and sugar, which contains a tiny little bit of alcohol, it’s served cold and in my opinion it’s better than any shop-bought fizzy drinks I’ve had. My Mum had always made it for Christmas/New Year’s, because that’s how it was at her home for some unspecified reason, but last year we had too much of everything else so she didn’t make it for Christmas which I was happy with because I was kind of sick on Christmas anyway so wouldn’t be able to enjoy it. Instead, she made it earlier this year, and since then, we’ve somehow really got hooked on it suddenly, as if we never had it before. So we came to a conclusion, why the flip only make it once a year, when you can have it all year round? Good thing that Sofi doesn’t like it, because when Sofi likes something, she absorbs it all at once, and this way there is more for the rest of us. 😀 It is very healthy, it has a lot of B vitamins and I don’t remember what else but my Mum listed a whole lot of things. It’s very refreshing. Initially, my Mum made her own, but then she made it again and it somehow didn’t turn out quite as good, at least in her opinion, so she kept experimenting until finally she decided to get the ready-made mix, got lots of it and lots of bottles, and now we have so much of it that I was at first wondering whether we’d manage to drink it all in two weeks as it’s best to do, and was worried that such a yumy thing will be wasted, but now I think there will be nothing left a lot sooner than that. It’ll probably be a fixed element of our diet now like kefir is for Mum, Sofi and me, and we may end up cutting back on shop-bought juices or soft drinks.
5. A great book series I’m reading right now. Ages ago, one of my penn pals who is also very much into Welsh language and Wales, and especially north Wales, mentioned to me his favourite book – The Brothers of Gwynedd Quartet by Edith Pargeter. – This is a historical series about prince Llywelyn/Llewelyn ap Gruffudd otherwise known as Llywelyn the Last. It sounded to me like something I’d absolutely love to read, generally I’d love to read any realistic historical book set in north Wales because I had no luck with them and when I came across something, it was annoyingly unrealistic so that even someone like me – not a history buff – could spot it. But at the time when we were first talking about it my main source of books in English was Audible, and this book wasn’t on Audible, neither was it translated to Polish, not surprisingly to me at all. But this year he reminded me of it and told me that he was re-reading it, and what a pity it is that I can’t read it as well, so I thought I need to have a look in other places that I currently also use for getting English books from, and – yay! – I got it! And I’ve been reading it for a week now and enjoying it a lot.
6.    Misha as always. Misha hasn’t been spending much time with me this week – or else I’d put him higher on this list – but whenever he does, it’s such a pleasure and I’m always grateful for it whenever it happens.
7. Feeling quite well mentally and emotionally lately. I’m trying to get as much out of it as I can while it’s lasting.
8. Jocky. I don’t have such a bond with Jocky as I do with Misha, he has this bond with Sofi and they fit each other so well, but I do love him and he’s a cute little fluffy ball and so playful and infecting with enthusiasm. But the reason why I put Jocky on this list is that he had an accident this week. He got hit by a car, and his tail was hurting a lot afterwards. It was so pitiful too see him hurting so much. Thankfully, when Mum and Sofi got him to the vet and he had X-rays, they were okay and he doesn’t have anything broken. But he still needs to take painkillers and it sure must have been hurting a lot at the beginning because even when Sofi would hold him gently and sit still, he would suddenly start to whimper. But now he’s more like his normal self and I’m so grateful for it because something like this could have easily ended up a lot worse.
9. My Mum. Like with Misha, I’m always grateful for my Mum, because she always does a lot for me and also she is just great as a person and a lot of fun to chat with.
10. Sleep. Mine has been really irregular for the last few days and last night for example I didn’t really sleep the best, but sleep is a great thing in general and I love to sleep, thus I’m grateful for it whenever I can get it, even if it’s not much.

Now you, what are you grateful for? 🙂

 

People and things I’m grateful for.

I’d like to write some journaling prompt-inspired post, so I picked a prompt from Listify by Marina Greenway again, and it is the following:

   People And Things I’m Grateful For

In addition to the wonderful people in your life, make room to be grateful for the other special things as well. The talents you were gifted with, your home that gives shelter and comfort, a text from your best friend. There are things that we unconsciously appreciate each day. Wrack your brain and list as many as you can think of. By the way, make sure you are on your list too.

Now, you may remember a post I wrote last year about

expressing gratitude and “self-gratitude”

which was also based on a prompt from Marina Greenway, and if you read it you know that I’m not buying the self-gratitude concept and don’t really understand it, or even if it is a thing I don’t understand what the difference would be between it and what’s commonly known as self-care/self-love. I also don’t get the being grateful for yourself notion, so I won’t be including myself on the list below. I could be grateful for my life, or my parents for giving it to me or towards God for creating me, but for myself, I just don’t see the logic in here.

Here’s the list, in semi-random order.Just so you know, it’ll of course be rather long, since it’s all about coming up with as many people and things as I can.

•    I’m grateful that God loves me. Also that I was raised in Christian faith and knew about God since the very beginning, and even though I later lost touch with Him, I have reconverted, and for all the people who help me develop my faith.
•    I’m grateful for my life. I rarely actually feel genuinely grateful for my life and the fact that I am alive, because I’m not all that strongly attached to life and passive suicidal thoughts are something that is pretty much always there in the background for me, nevertheless it is worth appreciating and all the good things that have happened to me during my life so far. Also that I’m still alive despite I used to be actively suicidal in the past and that I’ve learnt to live with the passive suicidal thoughts.
• That I’m Polish and live in Poland. I just like being Polish and I love the Polish language, and while you could always think about all the places where the grass is greener, I’m quite happy where I am and that my country is doing relatively well in the grand scheme of things – we are free, doing pretty well economically given the world situation, developing very fast etc. –
• My parents, that they are loving and caring and that I have reasonably good relationships with them, especially with Mum, and that they are still alive.
• My siblings, and especially my good relationship with Sofi and all the fun times we have together and that we get along despite a lot of differences.
• Misha, and all the emotional support he gives me, that he makes me feel happier, safe, loved, useful and that he makes my life worth living, for his friendship and for how beautiful he is. Also that now he’s lived 5 years with us.
• My online friends and the support and sense of community I get from interacting with them, and how meeting people who are like-minded with me but all in different ways makes me develop.
•    All of my fazas, especially the major ones. That is, both the phenomenon of faza and my faza subjects as individuals that they exist. All the happy feelings that I get thanks to my fazas, how it helps me to cope with life, grow, develop, feel inspired and motivated. How it helps me with my languages. Also my faza subjects’ music and how it resonates with me. And, most of all, my current faza peak on Jacob!
• Jocky and his neverending, infectious, child-like enthusiasm and happiness.
• My other family and that they care, sometimes way too much, and all the good things they did to me and everything they helped me with, like when I was at school a lot of my extended family members would go with Mum to take me from school when Dad couldn’t and Mum didn’t feel safe or able to drive herself so far from home for some reason.
• My languages that they exist and that I’m able to learn them or just be in touch with them, and especially the minority ones that are still alive, that they are alive despite it being a struggle. And that I have some sort of a knack for picking up the phonetics as it makes it a lot easier to learn languages. And that there are accessible places online where you can learn languages being blind. All the speakers of the extincting languages that I love, that they also keep them alive, and especially those who consciously care about keeping them alive and are proactive about this.
• All the technology I use, whether it is assistive/specialised or mainstream, as it all helps me to do almost everything in life. My computer, my phone and my screenreaders on both, all the assistive apps, my blog and all the other places where I can stay in touch with people, my PlexTalk and Braille-Sense thanks to which I can read, and listen to music, and also that I can use my Braille-Sense in conjunction with my phone which makes it a lot easier. That I can work thanks to technology, and develop my interests. That there are dedicated people who make these things. That there are so many accessible apps and websites even if a lot aren’t, and that there are people who care about accessibility.
•    Speaking of both language and assistive technology – people who create speech synthesis in small languages, which helps them to thrive and helps people like me with learning them. –
• That I’m secure financially at the moment and have a job, as well as flexible work hours and that it’s not too stressful or anything, also that I am able to get disability benefits.
• That I’m generally healthy.
• That I haven’t had a migraine in over two weeks (this is really noteworthy because for the last few months I’d been having them at least once a week, I wonder whether it also has anything to do with a peak because the start of my faza coincides with the break in my migraines.
• My home, that I have a place to live and that I actually feel at home here. And my room and that it is so great. That I don’t have to move around all the time anymore and have more of a sense of belonging.
• All the beautiful things in the world.
• Good sleep whenever I get it, and all my interesting, long and vivid dreams, and that I have a very comfy bed. Also all the nights when I cannot sleep because then I’m usually more creative so it has its benefits too.
• Good food.
• My synaesthesias, and other weird but fun things like that in my brain that make my life more interesting.
• Great books.
• All the great music in the world.
• That I can blog and journal.
• My sense of humour.
• My imagination.
• My brains.
• My empathy and sensitivity, although it can also be a pain sometimes, just like the imagination.
• My anti-anxiety medication.
• Warm, relaxing baths.
• My fabulous B&O headphones.
• That I was able to learn how to use the iPhone.
• My additional Bluetooth keyboard that I use with my iPhone when i can’t use my Braille-Sense.
• My gem stones.
• All the caring people in the world in general.
• And all the people in the world who are able to think critically and independently.
• That I haven’t vomited in over 10 years (for those who don’t know I am emetophobic which means I’m scared of anything to do with vomit).
• That I don’t have any neurodegenerative disease and my brain is working well.
• My relationships with the purgatory souls that I pray for, and the help from them that I experience.
• That I’ve been doing quite well mentally lately (in no small part due to the aforementioned peak).
• BitLife, and that today I won almost three million pounds in jackpot in BitLife and found a 10-carat diamond in my BitLife attic (which is a heirloom) so now I’m living the dream. 😀 That just shows BitLife isn’t really a real life simulator, but oh well. The first time I inherited an heirloom worth over a million dollars out of nowhere (it surely weren’t my BitLife parents who owned it 😀 ) and told my Mum about it, she said we should move there permanently.
•    That I’ve got lots of Toffifee for my birthday.
• That my cousin is considering the name Jacek for the baby she’s expecting (thanks to ME, of course! 😀 ) I somehow doubt they’ll actually use it, but I can hope, right?

That’s all I could come up with, hopefully I didn’t forget anyone or anything important.

What would your list look like? Let me know, or write your own post if you feel like it, and pingback to my post or comment with the link so I can read it! 🙂

 

Ten Things of Thankful – #TToT. –

Today, after a long time of not doing this, I’m linking up with

Ten Things of Thankful

to list some things I’m grateful for, as a sort of follow-up to my earlier post about ways of showing gratitude.

Here’s the list of things I’m thankful for.

1.    That we are all in good health, me and my family. I think that’s a huge thing to be grateful for any time. I’m not just talking Covid, but this, of course, too. It’s one of these things you typically only start to appreciate when something goes really wrong, so I’m trying to be grateful in advance.
2. My room. It’s my recharge place and a place I feel very strongly emotionally attached to so I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have my own room. Especially that mine is really beautiful, cosy and Mishful. I got to particularly appreciate it yesterday when Sofi was having a party that I mentioned earlier today, but Misha and I could just lock ourselves here and be oblivious to all that.
3. Great music and interesting books! I always make sure I’m not short on either and both these things are of tremendous importance for me every single week, making my life richer. Right now, I am listening especially much to Enya’s music – Enya was my very first major faza (or music fascination) and even though she’s more in the background now, still, every year, when it gets colder outside, I feel like listening to a lot of her music. –
4. Everything to do with MIMRA (My Inner MishMash Readership Award). That I am able to do MIMRAs, that I have my Mum to help me out with them, as she always helps a lot and although she’s not my reader she probably deserves a MIMRA herself 😀 that I have my loyal and supportive blog readers, that I have some cool ideas for MIMRA this year (although it all still needs to be polished)… There’s so much to be grateful for about MIMRA.
5. Kefir! A lot of people who aren’t really as huge fans of kefir as I am but do drink it sometimes might argue that it’s a distinctly summery drink. Well I drink it all year round and this week I’ve been drinking tons of it.
6. My Mum yet again! For all the other things beyond MIMRA she does for me. I feel really grateful that we have such strong relationship and can talk about lots of things, and also that we have relatively similar views on a lot of things – would be difficult otherwise living together, so it’s really a big plus. –
7. That we’ve been having pretty good weather this week. Today’s especially nice and sunny out there.
8. My iPhone and all the stuff I can do with it that I couldn’t before I got it, and that I’ve learnt to use it despite the touchscreen challenges well enough. This week, I’m especially grateful for being able to play BitLife when I had not much constructive stuff to do, especially at nights, as my sleep cycle was all over the place this week because of migraines, but at the same time I had too little energy to actually do something more useful. I’ve lived about 6 lives in Bitlife now and I always bond so closely with the character I’m playing.
9. All my penfriends, especially the ones with whom I’ve been writing for a longer time, their interesting emails, care, support, and all the conversations we have.
10. And Misha!!! How come I didn’t put him higher on the list? Misha slept with me in my bed last night, I mean really in bed, not on the bed or in his bed on my bed but properly under the duvet beside me, which happens very rarely, and I loved it. I am also grateful for that he spends a lot of time in my room now during the days, sleeping in a basket on the windowsill, so he can look out the window, smell the fresh air, feel the sun and wind, and the radiator beneath it. Sadly the radiator itself is way too narrow for Misha, otherwise I’m sure he would have preferred sleeping there. I’m always so grateful for having such a beautiful Mishball in my life, I’m insanely lucky in this regard.

So, these are the ten things I’m grateful for this week.

What’s on your list? 🙂

 

Ways of showing gratitude to others. And how about yourself? List of the former, and my (probably biased) musings about the latter.

Gosh, what a wordy and clumsy title! But I didn’t have any more graceful-sounding ideas and didn’t want it to be too bland either.

A while back, I bought myself another book to work with for my journal, and also for blog post inspirations, about the existence of which, again, I learned from Astrid at

A Multitude of Musings.

It’s Listify, written by Marina Greenway, and as you can guess from the title, it focuses mostly on lists. The first part of this book is all about gratitude, and the first list idea is the following:

   Ways I can show gratitude to myself and others

It’s important to show others we appreciate and care about them, but it’s equally important to acknowledge ourselves and all we do. List the ways you can do so, and challenge yourself to do one from each list everyday.

As for the challenging myself part, I wrote the original list in my journal a few days ago and decided to indeed do these things to show my gratitude to people. So far I don’t find it particularly difficult as it’s mostly my close family, and of course I’m doing the MIMRA which is also one huge act of gratitude but also a whole lot of fun for me. I suppose though with people I’d feel less comfortable around I’d have more problems with some of these points, but I’ll try anyway when there will be an opportunity, as gratitude is a good thing, obviously.

Below is the list of ways of showing gratitude to others that I’ve come up with so far.

   Gratitude to others

•    Simply say “thank you” or acknowledge in any other verbal way that I appreciate what they did.
• Give them an appreciative hug or show them affection in some other way.
• Compliment or praise them, or say anything nice that could boost their mood or confidence.
• Help in any way I can.
• Be attentive to their needs and show them my interest in them and that I care about them.
• Listen carefully and actively.
• Do something that may make them happier or even just make them laugh or smile.
• smile to them.
• spend time with them.
• Do random acts of kindness for them.
• Be there for them when they need it.
• Do the same thing for them that they did to me, if applicable.
• Give them something nice that they will enjoy, like a care package.
• Give some of my free time and energy to them, even when I could use it to do something else that I may like more.
• Be patient with them.
• Offer advice if wanted.
• Remember about them – for example, when doing shopping for myself I may do it for them as well if they need it, or if I see something that I know they like I can get it for them, or at least tell them that I saw it and where so that they know I often think about them and know what they like. –
• Write something nice about them, or for them, as writing often feels easier than talking to me.
• Give them their favourite meal or treat.
• Find a book or music they could like, again, to show them that I care and know something about them.

Can you come up with anything more? Please do share in the comments, unless you prefer to write a separate post and pingback, whatever feels better. 🙂

   Self-gratitude

Now that was (and is) a tricky thing to me. Not just implementing it, but generally the concept. I don’t know, perhaps I’m seeing it in a very inflexible way, and most likely, just like I wrote in the title, my view of this is very biased, but I can’t really see much sense in self-gratitude. Maybe I just don’t understand it well. As I was preparing to write this post, after I read some things online about it, thinking that perhaps they will enlighten me (which they didn’t) I asked my Mum what she thinks about it, whether she has ever felt it, and if she has any ideas about how one could express it, and also how it’s different from self-care or taking pride in your accomplishments. My Mum had a similar view on this and actually started laughing and said that to her it also doesn’t make much sense, because according to her in a way it implies that there would be another self inside of you to whom you could be grateful for example for doing something you yourself wouldn’t think about doing, or wouldn’t be able. Like: “Oh, thanks, self, for reminding me that I should set my alarm at 6 AM, I don’t want to sleep in”. 😀 I mean, do any of you really think like this – say you’re driving somewhere, and instead of taking your usual route you have a gut feeling to take a roundabout one, and later you learn that on your usual route there was a huge traffic jam because there was an accident earlier – would you think: “Oh yay, thank me!”? If you would, it’s not at all that I think it’s wrong for anyone to do this and I think you shouldn’t, I’m just curious and would like to know because it’s certainly not my default reaction and I would probably burst out with laughter if I tried to force myself to it.

What I assume people understand as self-gratitude, is for example when you had an exam and passed it very well, you learned for ages until your brain got so swollen it nearly burst out of your skull and you mainly focused on this goal of passing this particular exam because it’s important for you, so perhaps you often refused yourself many things you liked and spent most of your time with your nose in the books despite you didn’t particularly enjoy it. But you did pass the exam and you’re euphoric, so now you can go for a huge dinner plus some very fancy coffee and an ice-cream dessert, then go to the spa and have a massage and then go shopping for things you really enjoy shopping for, because this is your way of thanking yourself for your perseverance, determination and for achieving your goal.

And that’s all good. But, just like I said earlier when asking my Mum, how’s that different from just regular self-care or celebrating your accomplishments? It seems like it should if it has a different name, and when I was thinking about a potential list of ways to show myself gratitude, I thought it was just a list of self-care activities.

Perhaps I don’t think in such a “Thank me” way, because I am a Christian, and rather than thank myself, a much more natural thing for me is to thank God. Like, when it’s a nice day and the weather is lovely and there’s a lot of crunchy, fallen leaves for Misha outside, I’d rather say “Thank you, God, for giving me the idea to go out and refresh my brain, and thank you for the lovely weather and that there are so many beautiful leaves for Misha here” than something like “Thank me for going out”. It just feels totally unnatural to me, and I’m not just talking about the “thank me” form which I’m mostly using in a humourous way to emphasise just how unnatural and awkward the whole thing seems to me. I may rather say: “Oh, I’m so glad I went out” or: “What a great idea I had that I got some leaves for Misha” (that’s still not my typical inner dialogue as I’m normally way more self-critical and sarcastic with myself but at least something I’m trying to aim for).

When thinking about any accomplishments, I don’t really think of them in a way that I’m grateful to myself for them. For example, I am quite proud of my language learning accomplishments but am not grateful to myself for them. It’s not my merit that I have good linguistic skills, I didn’t get to choose them at birth or program my brain to pick up languages easily. Neither is it really my merit that I’m learning Welsh now, because I wouldn’t be able to do it if the people who did the course wouldn’t create it, if my Swedish teacher didn’t show me how to learn a language on my own and didn’t always believe in me and that I can do it, if I wasn’t taught how to use technology and if my Dad wouldn’t be employing me so I could actually allow myself for paying for the courses, buying Welsh speech synths, Welsh books and what not without stressing myself about it. Thinking according to Christian faith, I wouldn’t even be able to take any action having all these things if I wouldn’t get the idea from Holy Spirit. Okay, I guess I could be grateful to myself for acting upon that idea and not wasting the skills I have, but in what special way should I show this gratitude to myself? Sometimes I also have a sort of self-gratitude feeling when I feel really euphoric about something so my self-esteem also goes up but that’s very much fleeting and not a mature, serious kind of feeling so the more I don’t know in what way I could act on it.

Going my Mum’s trail of thought, that it sounds like we should be grateful to some other self, well, perhaps that makes some sense when we think that our personalities are made up of different parts. There may be, speaking in a very basic way, a part of us that is more prone to do good things, and another one that makes us do things that we regret later. So we may be grateful to that “good” part. Perhaps that’s what it’s all about. Or I’ve mentioned on this blog sometimes how I have this part of myself that I call Bibiel, who is very childlike and humourous and eccentric and always talks about Bibiel-self in first person and who is like a mentally healthier sort of, less inhibited version of me whom I actually genuinely like. So maybe the clue is that I should feel grateful to Bibiel? Actually I sort of am, because without Bibiel I’m not sure where I’d be now, and Bibiel helps me with a lot of things. Perhaps I should be more grateful to my inner self-critic Maggie when she’s not as critical of me as she is usually, and maybe that will make her feel better?

My Mum goes as far as to say that all these self- things only make people more conceited. I think that’s a rather huge overstatement because it’s definitely important to be kind to yourself and love yourself, as much for your mental, physical and emotional, as spiritual wellbeing and even the wellbeing of others, though there is certainly a risk of this as these days we hear about alll things self- all the time and it’s easy to lose balance between what’s still self-love and what’s already conceit, in my opinion.

So my view of this is definitely strongly influenced by the fact that I’m a practicing Christian, someone who is not might think differently, as well as the fact that I have avoidant personality disorder, which has quite a strong influence on how I feel about myself. And it’s because of AVPD that I think I may be biased here.

So I’d like to hear your thoughts about this. Do you practice self-gratitude? If so, in what ways and how would you define it? In what ways would you say is it different from self-care and celebrating your accomplishments? Am I missing out on something huge here? Let me know. I may not be able to share your opinion, but that doesn’t matter as far as I’m concerned, and who knows, you may even convince me. 🙂 Oh yeah, and let me know if you can think of some other ways to show gratitude to other people perhaps ones that you use yourself that I didn’t list.

 

Misha’s belated Thankful Thursday.

Hhrrru?! 😻

How are you doing pets and peeps? This is Misha, of course, and I haven’t posted anything in a loooong time! Mila usually only allows me to write my usual posts, or “The Human Life of Misha Hhrrru?” stories but today she let me take part in a blog link-upcalled

Thankful Thursday

and this is a lot of fun so I’m very happy!

What I’m most thankful for, this week?

Guess what, I know i’m probably going to sound very ignorant, but I don’t care. I know that there is that COVID-19 thing going on for humans, but I don’t really know what it is other than it freaks people out and is somewhat dangerous and that because of it, my peeps are at home way more than they usually are, even though they don’t freak out about it at all. Usually, Mila is most of the time with me, but now all of the peeps are in, and I am so happy about it. I’m not freaking out about this COVID thing. Do you think I should? If it makes my peeps like staying at home more, I’m thankful to it and for it. I only know a little piece of the world but know enough about the world to understand that many things have both good and bad sides to it, and I hope my peeps can skip the bad stuff. I think it must be awful if they talk about it so much in the telly and radio so I don’t want my peeps to have to get through it. I would like to be able to help so they would stop calling me selfish.

Also, there is another benefit for me from COVID-19. Lots and lots of food! Earlier this week, Mum went out and came back with like a dozen of tins with my favourite food and a lot of Mish ice-cream as well! So I have a huge supply of good food. What can be more comforting in tough times?

ANother good thing is that because of the COVID-19, no one is allowed to come to us either. And I am so happy about it, because, as you may know, I really dislike most strangers, unless they are nice and quiet and sound and smell nice. But most people don’t, so in general I only like my peeps and maybe a few others of those I know. It’s so disturbing when you wake up from a nice nap, go down to the kitchen to have a dinner and suddenly you realise that there’s a stranger in there. Some don’t care for me at all and some get offended if I don’t come to them if they call me. They don’t understand that my name is Misha, not Kitty or Pussycat, so I only come when someone calls Mish Mish Mish, and when I feel like it.

So, in short, I’m thankful for the good stuff about COVID. What are some good things that come from it for you that you are thankful for, pets and peeps? Does it scare you and what about it scares you the most? What else are you thankful for?

Mishpurs.

Misha 💜 💚 💙

Ten Things Of Thankful.

I haven’t participated in

Ten Things Of Thankful

in ages, I saw the post by Astrid of A Multitude Of Musings last weekend and only realised I haven’t linked up in a long time or so it feels. So I’m very happy that I’ve managed to do that this week, although I doubted I will be able to do it in time. I’ve been feeling rather crappy emotionally and moodwise the last few days so a bit of gratitude will be a good thing.

• Because it is Independence Day in Poland, the first thing on my list is just that – our independence! That we have been an independent country for 101 years now, that we have had such difficult history yet are thriving, and in the recent years it’s visible more than ever. I’m grateful to and for all those people who sacrificed their lives for it to happen, who went through all sorts of horrific experiences or personal losses during WWI. As I said in the song of the day post I think we so often tend to take it all for granted. I’m also so extremely grateful that I’m Polish. I love many countries, and even more languages to pieces, but I often feel like I wouldn’t like to be born any other nationality than Polish, and it would be such a flippin shame if I wouldn’t speak Polish. I probably would never learn it because it would be too difficult, so my brain would be so much poorer, and would I want to learn languages as I do know, my start with it could have not been as easy with a less complex mother tongue. 😀 Living in Poland has its downsides just as anywhere else, but there are so many things that are just non-existent in all other countries and that are absolutely great.
• That I won’t have to pay for the repair of my new computer. As you may remember, it got damaged during the delivery, so the company through which I bought it appealed to the delivery company so that they would cover the cost of the repair, because it was actually not working at all. In the end they said they’ll cover the cost of a new one. I’m also grateful for that somehow my laptop is still functioning. I really don’t know what’s going on with the drive, it’s not working properly and I really don’t like this limbo phase lingering on forever, especially that getting used to a new one will be even more stressful, but at least I do have a (more or less) working computer. Otherwise my brain would stop working. 😀 Okay, maybe not straight away, but not long afterwards. So I hope I can keep it (the computer) alive as long as it’s necessary. And I’m doing something on it most of the time so I bet it’s exhausted.
• That my airways are doing better. This time of the year is allergy time, and then it’s very easy for me to get my seasonal bronchitis. It felt like I was going to get it very soon but to my relief I’m feeling much better, and hope that doesn’t mean the bronchitis thing is just going to be delayed, but that it won’t come this year.
• (mentioning self harm and other stuff, nothing graphic. Please skip if you feel it could be triggering) My bed. I spent all morning in bed and got out of there long after noon. I’ve been in a shithole and just didn’t have the mental energy to drag myself out of bed whatsoever, and the perspective of having to interact with people was overwhelming. So, when you can’t get out of bed, it’s good when you have a comfy, double bed like I do. I’m still rather shitty though more functional, generally that doesn’t happen often to me that I seriously can’t get myself to do things, I often struggle with it but can do it in the end, so today was pretty hard. I’m just feeling emotionally overloaded lately and my inner critic Maggie is having a hyperactive phase or something, she’s hyperactive most of the time but sometimes more than ever and then I feel like annihilating us both. Oh and another thing I’m thankful for that is related, I’m thankful for not cutting at all lately! I’ve managed to go no cutting since July which is not my life record but at some point this weekend I was sure I’m gonna do this but I didn’t. I guess apart from my will-power what held me back was that now I have that weird sore thing on my leg I’ll have more than enough scars on my legs, and I usually cut my legs because it’s not very likely to be noticed. I guess the cutting crisis is over for now so that’s good. I’m not sure why I’m having this overload thing right now, I guess just because I haven’t had for quite long so my brain decided it’ll be the right time, and I suppose a lot of small things triggered it.
• painkillers. I’ve had a bit of a headache today, not a strong one but annoying enough for me to decide to take something for it as I had a hard time focusing on my writing. Luckily it helped as now it’s lessened and hopefully will go away completely soon.
• My Inner MishMash Readership Award. I’m so excited about making it. It’s a long weekend now but hopefully tomorrow I can get the last things I need for it and then will be sending it out and revealing the winners.
• Misha. Misha is such a tremendous support for me. For the last few days he’s been very moody, but he has his cuddly moments now as well when he wants me to cuddle him for like 15 minutes and is so cute then. It is rare for him so the more I appreciate it.
• my Dad. I’ve been having a bit hellish times with him but that makes me feel like the more I should include him. I’m very grateful that he employs me, and helps me in a lot of practical ways, though being around him is a real test for my patience more and more, gradually and when I’m having those emotional overloads and all that self-loathing stuff I’m particularly easy to get angry with people as well.
• my mum. Just like my Dad, she is very practically supportive of me so I wouldn’t manage without her, especially that she is my proxy when dealing with people, which I appreciate hugely and can’t imagine what my life would be like without a “peopling” proxy hahaha.
• All my blogosphere friends and penfriends. They make it a bit lighter in the shithole. As I said, my family is brilliant but I can’t really talk to them about most of the stuff that is going on in my brain, except for with Mum about some of it that she can relate to in any way, and it’s also extremely hard to reach out to people when I’m feeling like I do right now. So it’s good that I have people online these days. Even when I can’t or don’t know how to talk about my mental health struggles it feels good to just be able to chat with someone who thinks similarly, and it makes a difference when you know you’re not alone.

If this list feels a bit forced to you it’s because it was, haha. But I just felt I needed to write something and I guess we should be grateful for even the smallest things, shouldn’t we? 🙂

Ten Things Of Thankful.

I’m very very late but I thought I’d like to join in with

Ten Things Of Thankful

and write a bit about some things I’ve been grateful for this past week, since the link up is still open. Here’s my gratitude list.

1. My Mum reading to me. I’ve always loved it when my Mum read books to me, although it hasn’t been very often in the recent years. Last week was different though. One day I just asked Mum to read me something, not expecting much enthusiasm in return, but she did agree! So I picked my favourite fairytales book with the fairytales from around the world where people always have so ridiculously long names and placenames are even longer (most of the fairytales in it are from the African countries), which always annoyed her so much. Like, is there even such a country, Biladutasemipi? I’m curious what does the Biladutasemipian language sound like? Must be crazy. But then I remembered there was a book I never read, that I bought for myself a few years ago. I never read it because my OCR scanner pissed me off and I couldn’t scan it, but I always wanted to read this book. It’s the correspondence between Astrid Lindgren and Sara Schwardt, who wrote to Astrid for the first time when she was 12 and they were like penfriends for 30 years, Sara was one of her readers. So then I asked Mum if we could read that book and, so far, we’ve read perhaps four letters, and that’s something, given how easily Mum falls asleep when reading anything. It’s very interesting, although I can barely keep myself from correcting her Swedish pronunciation, but I know I’d be a prick doing it all the time so I try not to.
2. Cocoa. You know how I love coffee. And, even though I decided some weeks ago that I am going to, I need to, cut on how much coffee I drink and not drink it everyday, because it makes my anxiety worse, but I was drinking it once in a while anyway. Well, now when I don’t drink coffee everyday, I can clearly see that, apart from energising me, coffee really doesn’t make me much of a favour and makes me feel crappy in a lot of ways. Yes, I drink green tea instead of coffee, I am trying to befriend it, but, while green tea works perfectly in making me more functional in the mornings, I still don’t really like how it tastes, hence I miss my coffee still. So, I’ve looked for some alternatives and decided I’ll try natural cocoa. Even if it won’t be as effective as green tea, though it does have some stimulating properties, at least I can drink it as a taste alternative to coffee, prepare it a bit like I would a cuppa coffee. And that seems to work. I used to be really mistrustful towards cocoa because it made me sick years ago, and I am emetophobic, and I usually never eat things that made me sick even if just once, but cocoa and orange juice are the only exceptions, because I really like them and at some point, some years ago already, I just was able to think logically and realise I just had to have bad luck one time and drink them either when they were expired or something, and neither cocoa nor orange juice have ever made me sick again, and I would be very surprised if they ever would in future. Especially that, hey, it’s not that easy to make a person with emetophobia throw up. 😉 So, I’m drinking green tea every day and when I want something more like a coffee, I have a mug of cocoa.
3. My penfriends. For last week, especially my English penfriend whom I help a bit with learning Polish. Such things make you properly explore your own language and realise you don’t know quite as much about it as you’d like to think. I love such brain stimulating stuff!  I am also very grateful for those of my penfriends who have been very loyal and with whom I’ve been writing for a while already. It’s a rare thing to find a pen pal that you’d write with for, well, over 2 months, so when you write each other for half a year or 10 months it becomes to look impressive, and feels like a fabulous achievement! 🙂
4. Warm, but not hot weather. I really like how it is outside now. Definitely pleasant.
5. Playing with Zofijka. We always have a lot of fun with Zofijka, and recently we’ve played quite a lot together. She always makes me laugh, not even because she’s always so funny, but because her laughter is very infectious.
6. Music. I discovered a lot of great music last week again, and listened to a lot of music that I hadn’t listened to in ages.
7. Good blood test results. I had a blood test last week, and so did my Mum. I wasn’t quite concerned about my results, and I am glad they are good, but I was very worried about my Mum, who was at the gynaecologist’s a while ago and she told her she had a cyst on the ovary and something on her breast as well. She doesn’t seem to have cancerous cells as it turned out now, so that’s good, although she’ll need to have an ultrasound to make sure all’s well. But that cyst thing really gave me a bit of a scare.
8. misha. misha had a week of solitude last week and wasn’t very involved, I saw very little of him, but as always, I treasured every moment with him.
9. doing cupping therapy for my Mum. Do you know what cupping is? You put the cups (but not the cups that you drink your tea from obviously haha, they’re either gum or glass cups that are used for cupping) on someone’s back, or chest at times, those cups are either fire cups or they suck in the air so that they stay pressed to the skin, and it’s an alternative or complementative treatment that is used to make the immune system stronger, so especially when you are ill. My grandad, who is a bit of a quack, very much into medicine, but not a doctor, can do cupping with glass cups and has often done it to us when we were sick and the doctor said cupping could help. And some time ago my grandad taught me how to do cupping for someone, with those cups that suck the air inside of them, that you place on the skin with a pump. That was horrendously difficult and I was stressed to do it on my own, because, well, what if I wouldn’t notice a bone or something and do it wrong! But my Mum likes to have cupping done regularly to keep her immune system working properly and over the last few months I’ve become pretty good at doing cupping, although I’ve had one situation when I failed and placed a cup on Mum’s mole by accident, which scared the shit out of me, but thankfully nothing happened afterwards. And, on Sunday, my Mum got a cold, probably during her run. We hope she won’t get her episodic asthma flare from it. So, to prevent it, and to get well sooner, my Mum asked me to do the cupping to her on Sunday evening. Which I did. It’s still a bit stressful to me but I enjoy doing it, and I am glad I’m getting better and better at it, and I like learning new things like that (that are available to me without sight) from my grandad. Mum feels a bit better today and is eating tons of ginger.
10. A good news from my gran. She phoned my Mum last week and asked if we’d like to go on a pilgrimage with her again at the beginning of September, to a place where we were last year – Mum, Zofijka and me – and we all really enjoyed it. Of course we’re all going!

What are you thankful for? 🙂

Share Your World.

I am happy to participate in Melanie’s at

Sparks From A combustible Mind

Share Your World this week! Here are Melanie’s questions and my answers:

 

What happens if you-stare at the mirror for too long in the dark?   (credit to Ursula of An Upturned Soul.  If you haven’t read Ursula’s blog, go over and just wade in and enjoy.   To me she’s fascinating and what she writes about is always worth the journey).

Mmm nothing really, haha. I’ve never seen anything particularly interesting happening when I stare at the mirror, and it’s always in the dark as I am blind. 😀 Perhaps I should do that more often, or for longer, and maybe something fascinating will happen. Maybe I’ll end up being the next Alice in the looking glass house.;)

Do you think you’re judgmental?  What tends to bring it out in you?  (Credit to Ashleyleia for this one)

In short, as I wrote in the comment on Ashley’s post, yes, I think I am judgmental. But I also think we all are and we need it, to some extend. What matters is if you’ll let your judgments influence your actions.As for what brings it out in me, I consider myself a good judge of character, but I sometimes end up relying on my instincts too much, and let my judgments shape the picture of a person too early. I’ve noticed that pattern some time ago and now I am able to see it and stop doing it, or not it influence my relation to the person.

Do you work better with actual lists or with mental lists?  (Credit to Sadje of Keep it Alive)

I actually hardly ever make actual to-do lists, only when I have really loads of stuff to do and all is very important and stressful or something. But I think I should make a habit of using them more, because I am quite disorganised and can suck at doing things in order or determining what’s most important at the moment. But so far usually I mostly do mental lists.

Would you go streaking across a football field during a game for a million dollars (insert your own country’s currency), knowing there’s a 50/50 chance you’ll get arrested for indecent exposure? (this one is mine.  Yeah, my mind wanders to some highly strange places sometimes).

No way! First off, it always amazes me a bit how often people happily and proudly declare that they would do something they normally find very unpleasant, disgracing or immoral if they would be paid a lot. In my opinion that doesn’t speak good about them. Even recently I had a conversation with Olek, I don’t know how it evolved this way but we were talking something about bananas, we had bananas in the house and no one was eating them, and they were getting rotten apparently. I said that I hate bananas anyway, let alone rotten. And he was like: “But if someone would offer you to make you a billionaire if you eat a basket of half rotten bananas, wouldn’t you do that?” – and he asked it as if the answer was obvious and the same for everyone. Hell no, what’s the point? How will I know they will really give me the money in the end? And I guess the only use that I will have of that fortune would be for my family as a legacy, I’m not sure one would survive eating a basket of half rotten bananas, no idea how it can affect a person, don’t have the experience. So, same here. What’s the point in me having a million if I’d be disgraced and people would know me as “the one who went streaking across the football field”. I wouldn’t have any pleasure out of it, and I’m pretty sure they’d catch me, my brain would constantly have a go at my extreme silliness, and my conscience would kill me. :DLast, but not least, I’m too self-conscious.

Lastly:

Gratitude/Thankful/Enriching

What has happened in your life that made you feel uplifted and happy, if only temporarily?

Misha, Misha always makes me uplifted and happy, even just a little bit.

My gratitude list. #TToT.

I recently wrote a gratitude list and I thought I’d do this again, but this time I’m linking up with

Ten Things Of Thankful.

So without further ado, here’s my list.

   1.

Eating my Mum’s meringue with whipped cream, raspberries, strawberries and peaches. We had a bonfire today, and while I didn’t took part in it, Mum left some yummy food for me, including the meringue. We all like it most with blueberries, but blueberries seem to be very expensive at the moment and Mum didn’t want to make it with blueberries for all the guests not knowing if they will actually eat it. But it was still very good. And as we are at it, I appreciated that I didn’t have to be there too, I could hear all the noise from my room well enough. 😀

2.

Spending a lot of time with Misha. He wasn’t keen on sleeping with me every night, but still, we spent a lot of time together this week, and as especially the second part of it has been difficult for me, it’s greatly valued.

   3.

Green tea. Perhaps you recall my recent coffee dilemmas. It seems like I have the solution. I’ve been trying different kinds of green teas and other drinks like that that could get me going, but wasn’t particularly convinced as they either weren’t working much or I didn’t like the taste. Now I found the right green tea for me as it seems and I use xylitol with it to make it taste better.

4.

(Slightly) cooler weather. It’s still rather hot, but it’s manageable and cooling down which I am very happy about and desperately hopeful that this tendency will keep for a while.

5.

My family. Yesterday was the funeral of my Mum’s acquaintance’s daughter who died tragically in an accident. It was shocking, and made me feel grateful that I do have my whole family.

6.

Long walks with Mum and Jocky. That always helps me to clear out the brain a bit.

7.

Crisps. I’ve got a lot this week and liked them a lot.

8.

Music. I’ve been listening to plenty of fabulous music this week, including right now. Music helps me greatly in so many aspects of life and I can’t imagine my life without it.

9.

Eating pasta with broccoli sauce yesterday for dinner. This is such a ridiculously minimalistic meal we usually have it when there isn’t much time or not many things to eat at the moment or lack of creativity. But we all love it anyway.

   10.

Sleep. It hasn’t always been the best for me this week, but I did have some very restful sleep and I appreciated it very much, and I’m soon going off to sleep as it’s already past midnight and hope tonight I can also be grateful for good sleep.

What are you grateful for this week? 🙂

Share Your World.

I know I’m quite late to the game, but I am still going to participate in Melanie’s

Share Your World

this week. 🙂 Here are the questions and my answers.

 

What do fish do all day?   What thoughts do you think they have?  (Credit to the awesome Teresa and her Fibbin’ Fridays for this one)

Play hide and seek, try to survive and not let other fish/water creatures/fishers catch them, tell each other stories and fairytales about life on the land.I don’t know what they think about but their minds must be really busy since they can’t speak. If they are sea fish, maybe they enjoy people watching during the summer when people come to the seaside?

What celebrity would you have as a SPOUSE, if you HAD to choose?

Oh that’s a tough one as I’m rather ignorant about celebrities, I mean there is hardly anyone that I would know well enough to be able to consider as a spouse. I have my music crushes, but aside from Enya and Cornelis Vreeswijk they aren’t really celebrities and even Vreeswijk is a celeb only in Sweden, and Enya probably wouldn’t be too glad being called a celebrity, she’s just famous. Besides, Enya can’t be my spouse because I am straight, and even if I wasn’t, I’ve always regarded her kind of more like my secret second mummy, someone I’ve always admired, especially as a teen, not in a way you admire someone you love in a romantic way. Cornelis has been long dead before I was born, and, as much as I admire his artistic skills, great mind and all and feel a lot of connection to him in a crush-y way, I really don’t think a romantic relationship between us would be a good idea, it would be a grotesque! We have too much and too little in common at the same time, if you can understand what I mean. 😀 and I wouldn’t feel comfortable in a relationship with someone who has so different beliefs and views and had already had three spectacularly failed marriages and dozens of other romantic relationships that didn’t work out, even if we have a lot in common intellectually/emotionally and on some other levels. Also he was terribly paranoid, is that called Othello’s syndrome? And was addicted to… well, almost everything. And goodness he could be my grandad unless I could time travel, I am not a gerontophile. But then again, I doubt many celebs would be on the same page with me in terms of views and beliefs, and I find it essential in a long term romantic relationship. My two other crushes – Declan Galbraith and Gwilym Bowen Rhys – would be more doable as my potential spouses, though I don’t feel like I have as much in common with Declan as I used to, or as I used to feel, so I guess Gwilym would be the best fit (ethe more  that I would love to live in north Wales and we have quite a few common interests, but we are very different in terms of personalities though that’s actually cool here), but then as I said he’s not really a celebrity, not how people usually imagine celebrities, unless we could call him a local celebrity. 😀 Other than that, I guess it would require much more thinking and research for me to come up with an answer. 😀 Oh I kinda like Alexander Rybak (the guy who won the Eurovision in 2009), and he seems very cool and pleasant, but I’m not crazy about him enough to be his spouse, and Zofijka would kill me, because she likes him much more than me, so much so that she would probably accuse me of stealing. So no, no idea. 😀

What’s the most expensive thing you’ve ever broken?

Don’t ever leave your expensive things with me, especially tech stuff. 😀 My most spectacular achievement was spilling kefir al over my Braille-Sense (yes, the current one, and yes, it’s still alive somehow) about five years ago I suppose, I was in a state of euphoria (yeah ultrarare for me, but I had a sound reason), and as far as I can remember didn’t exactly know what I was doing, but I somehow had to move my arm very suddenly and quickly and there was a glass of kefir standing quite close to the Braille-Sense so before I could react in any way it was all soaked. All euphoria gone in a second. It was scary! Not only because it’s just awful when you break something expensive but I had to go to the boarding school the next day, and it meant that I’d be going without most of my music and books and it was going to be a very difficult time for me because of that, and not only because of that.I was determined and desperate and took it to school with me anyway as I couldn’t face it otherwise, I tried drying it with a hairdryer to make it work at least a bit and I did manage, but still the Braille display was screwed up and something inside of it under the keys was all soaked up in kefir so when I was using the keys they were actually doing whatever they wanted, not at all what I wanted them to do, and working on it was terribly slow. Also, I didn’t take one very important thing into account when taking it with me to school, it soon became very characteristically smelly and the smell was extending itself further so I freaked out that our whole room is soon going to smell with kefir and I had to do something about it, so I sent it to get it fixed. I remember feeling very concerned what they will think of me there seeing that it’s all soaked up in kefir. 😀 It’s funny now, but I was stressed out like hell. Mind you that Braille-Sense is a specialised device so the servicing was also that bit pricier than your average laptop or phone. I have quite a history of breaking tech stuff in this or that way, however I haven’t spilled kefir over anything else thankfully, I’m extra sensitive about such stuff now. 😀

When was the last time you slept more than 9 hours in a stretch?  Why?

On Wednesday, the night from Tuesday to Wednesday that is. It is not a rare occurrence for me. I am blind, without light perception so my circadian rhythm is not particularly steady and gets dysregulated very easily, but also I seem to have very varying need for sleep, and I don’t really know if that’s as normal for the blind. It’s like sometimes I can sleep 2 hours and wake up feeling rested and energised, or I can sleep for 4 hours and feel as if I had no sleep at all and am a zombie for the whole day, or I need 12 hours of sleep suddenly for no apparent reason. Sometimes when I don’t sleep at all at night I feel crappy afterwards, very anxious or zoning out all the time or can’t wait until the evening, even if it’s just 7 PM, because I want to sleep, or sometimes  don’t even feel any difference with how I feel after a sleepless night vs 9 hours of sleep and am perfectly OK and wouldn’t even mind staying up late sometimes. It seems to go for me in cycles though I haven’t yet figured out how exactly it works and what – other than messing up with sleep routine or something external that changes my sleep patterns in an obvious way – causes the change. Anyway, that night I am talking about I slept for 11 hours, from 11 PM to 11 AM, and I suppose it was the anti-anxiety medication that I took in the evening that knocked me out, perhaps together with feeling a bit tired after a lot of social interaction – a lot for my standards. – I actually wrote about that night very recently because of the series of Scotland-themed dreams I had then, that I absolutely loved. I normally hate sleeping late or very long for no apparent reason but I loved the dreams. Oh and my record so far is 19 hours, and I wouldn’t like to beat it, it was quite an odd and a little bit creepy thing, actually more so for my family than fr me. 😀

Share something you were really grateful for this year (so far):

Misha, Misha and Misha first of all. I sometimes really wonder how I coped before I had him. He makes loads of difference for me in different aspects of my life. My family and all my online friends definitely. Also that I am finally on disability allowance, that always helps and I feel more secure financially.

Question of the day.

What are five things you’re grateful for this week so far?

My answer:

1. A very nice meeting we had on Tuesday that was organised by Zofijka’s friend’s mum, I wrote about it in the coffee share post, would give the link but I’m posting via email so don’t have it at hand. It was a very interesting meeting and a very nice one.

2. My anti-anxiety medication. The meeting wouldn’t be quite as good for me without it, and even with it it was still a bit of a challenge socially.

3. My exquisitely Scottish dreams that I had the night before the last. I just don’t know what happened, but I assume it’s also my anti-anxiety med that I should thank for that, to some degree at least, that it made me sleep so deeply and for so long. When we came back from the meeting, I felt a bit tired, like sleepy, and I thought it was because of the med, as it sometimes works like that for me. So I went to bed really quickly and early and was knocked out in a minute, or not much longer really. And then, I had one absolutely crazy, gloomy, sad and awful dream to do more or less with my past, but then I had loads and loads of Scottish-themed dreams, it was incredible! As if I had some calling from Scotland or whatever! Like I had one dream about being on holidays in Edinburgh, then another about a gig I went to with my Dad, of a harpist and I even remember her name – she was Aileen or Eileen MACHamish – beautiful name (especially that Hamish is one of my recent fastest rising personal boy name favourites, how did my brain know that?!), and she was also a fabulous harpist. But sadly it doesn’t seem like Aileen/Eileen MACHamish even exists! Then I had a dream involving Julie Fowlis (a Scottish singer who sings in Scottish Gaelic, and whose songs I’ve shared here some time ago and am certainly going to share more over time). I remember that there was a BBQ at my gran’s, we were all sitting in her garden, my family that is, and I was sitting on a swing that my gran has in there, with Julie Fowlis, and I remember we were chatting about something and both very absorbed in it and laughing a lot and hugging each other, and we had both crazily heavy Scottish accents, even Julie doesn’t normally have an accent like that, not to mention me! 😀 It was a bit comical. I also watched “Brave” with Zofijka, you know, that Disney movie about Merida and her mum who was transformed into a bear, the only Disney movie I actually care about at all. We did watch it with Zofijka loads of times and by the way Julie Fowlis sang in there. And I even dreamt about my potential boss, or the one I hoped would be my boss. You might remember that I was looking into another job opportunity about two months ago. So that company I so wanted to work with was Scottish, and I dreamt about the guy who’d be my boss there if I’d get that job. 😀 But while in our email exchange he was reasonably nice, in my dream he was very grumpy and not at all likeable. And I had other Scottish-themed dreams too but I don’t remember enough of them to have any very specific recollections. Anyway, that was cool, and funny and I really enjoyed all those dreams. I guess that must be some sort of a sign that I seriously should do Scots as my next language! 😀

4. The fan in my room. And that even though it’s really hot this week again, and I’ve had a lot of headaches thanks to this, I didn’t get another migraine.

5. Audible, Audible credits, and interesting books in ENglish.

What would be your five things? 🙂

My little gratitude list.

I’ve just thought I’ll do one so here goes:

A very warm weather in the morning. I woke up quite early, ate breakfast and then sat in the living room with Mum enjoying our drinks, with the balcony door open, and the sun was shining and it felt almost hot there, but not too hot. It felt very nice. In the afternoon it started to rain heavily and was stormy though.

Having a nice, low key day. Which I really appreciate today, as I’ve been having a headache all day long, so don’t feel particularly energised and am happy I don’t have to go out anywhere or do anything very important or stressful or whatever. It is not the kind of headache that would put me to bed and that I’d be completely non functional, but still it’s quite disturbing and painkiller doesn’t seem to work, but it doesn’t feel strong enough for me to take the stronger one for more migraine-ish stuff. I’ve had this kind of headaches prety often in the last couples of week. Oh but I’m digressing.

All my friends – penfriends, in the blogosphere, etc. all of them. I’m really grateful for having so many great people around me online!

A long, hot shower I had a while ago. Sometimes a long, warm bath or shower helps me with a headache or a migraine, which today didn’t happen, but it was cool anyway. It’s getting warmer, so my skin is not as dry, so I feel more daring with soaking in the water, no having to regret it later because of feeling dry and itchy.

Yummy food I’ve had today, and a lot of veggies. For breakfast I had sandwiches with my Mum’s baked pork chop, I guess that’s how you’d call it, and lettuce, parsley, spinach, cress, tomatoes, radishes and chive. We have loads of vegetables right now, thanks to my Dad’s gardening hobby, which my Mum looks down upon and laughs at, but I think it’s really good for him that he has some constructive hobby, and also that it’s so useful, as it’s nice to have your own vegetables. For lunch we had chicken soup with noodles, and also a lot of parsley – we can’t imagine a chicken soup without parsley, not a good one at least. And for supper my Dad made his artsy sandwiches especially for me. 😀 My Dad’s sandwiches are very special ones, because he always puts so much effort into them, making sandwiches for himself or anyone else is a bit like a ritual for him I guess, or looks so. A characteristic of them is that they are full of everything, especially when it comes to spices, his view is that the more you put on your sandwich, or to any dish actually, the better it is. I don’t always agree with this view but I really liked his sandwiches today, and it was cool that he made them especially for me cus he needed company while eating supper and everyone else were either sleeping or immersed in the TV/smartphone/observing the fish tank. 😀

Misha. I’m grateful for Misha every day. Recently I tried to think back what it was like back when I didn’t have Misha, or didn’t even know him, which wasn’t so long ago after all, but it was kind of difficult to even imagine, Misha feels like an essential part of my life, and I call him my personal bundle of happiness. He wasn’t particularly convinced when I asked him to go sleep with me last night, but instead he spent a good part of the day sleeping in my room during the day, first in the morning, and then in the afternoon, when I was doing my Welsh, and then watching the rain falling outside at my window. Nowadays, when I learn Welsh, it’s mostly listening, and today I had my 2,5 hours weekly marathon, so then I don’t do anything else but listen and read. So, as I felt exhausted because of the headache, I just laid beside him and we held each other’s upper limbs for moral support – I suppose the moral support was mostly for me as I was really frustrated with myself ’cause I still can’t make sense of what I’m hearing, and kept distracting. Perhaps doing the Welsh marathon with a headache wasn’t the best idea in the first place, but I doubt it’d be much different otherwise, and I had enough free time on my hands so I knew I would regret it if I wouldn’t use it when I had it ’cause 2,5 hours without external distractions doesn’t happen often to most of us.

My Plextalk, and that it is so small so I can actually lie on the bed with it and plug the headphones in and listen. And generally, I’m grateful for it because it saves me from boredom, silence anxiety as I call it, and so many other things. I’m also grateful for my laptop as otherwise I wouldn’t be able to do most of the things I do, and for my Braille-Sense, ’cause even though it is falling apart I’m still using it a lot and life would be harder without it.

That I slept quite well last night. Not very well, because I have blocked nose since a few days because of allergy to something I have yet to find out what it is, but reasonably well. And I am also grateful that it’s already evening so I can soon go to bed and hopefully will wake up tomorrow and will feel better physically.

That I feel pretty much on the baseline emotionally and moodwise. That’s of course my baseline, not like for most people haha, but I am glad it is like this anyway.

Blogging, writing, journaling. As I’ve said multiple times, it always helps me with expressing myself so is always very therapeutical, and just pleasant.

Reading a lot of interesting things lately.

That I am able to learn my languages, and, even if there is such a bit of a low like with my Welsh lately, i am mostly really good at it, and am lucky not to have to put as much effort into it as many other people. I’m also very grateful that I could do my Welsh learning today, and hopeful that I’ll soon see some progress.

What are things you are grateful for? 🙂

Share Your World.

It’s been centuries since I last participated in

Share Your World

at Melanie’s. I guess the last time was around… Christmas? That’s what I can remember, which is a shame because I used to participate in SYW pretty regularly and it’s fun. The questions this week are really cool so here goes, and if you’d like to participate too head over to her blog. 🙂

 

1. Was the last thing you read digital or print? – Digital, pretty much anything I read is digital, because I am blind, and Braille books are quite pricey, clunky, and limited in terms of availability of what you can choose from.
2. Are you more an extrovert or introvert? – Introvert all the way! Introverts rule! Yay for introverts! 😊 But actually, I read some of the fellow participants’ posts already earlier this week and quite a couple people stated that they are more extroverted on the Internet, and so am I, though it also depends on the circumstances and where on the Internet, the Internet itself doesn’t make me extroverted haha.
3. How is your life different from what you imagined as a younger person? – Hard to say, because as a child and teen I didn’t have a stable view of what I’d like to be or could be. As a very little child I wanted to be a singer, musician and dancer, and I didn’t want to have children “Because when women don’t want to have children they don’t have to have them, and when they want, they can” (that’s what I said in a film about my nursery where they asked me whom I’d like to be and my family laugh at it on every possible occasion). Indeed, I never really wanted to have children, and still don’t want, even if I wanted it seems pretty unlikely for multiple reasons. But as I grew older I never wanted to do anything with music professionally. I wanted to be a psychologist, writer, sound engineer, translator, quack (like my grandad sort of :D) and lots of other things. But when I was a very little girl, five-year-old or a little bit older, I once had a weird kind of dream…? I don’t know if it was a dream, an imagining, just a thought, or whatever, but I was lying in bed so I think it could be a dream, it was just one small scene but very clear to me. I saw myself in it as an adult, standing in the middle of a huge kitchen, as if I was about to prepare a meal or something, and there were kids all around me, a lot of children, mostly toddlers, all clinging to me. But what I remember the best from that little scene was some weird sense of despair, or helplessness that I felt. I felt lost and confused and like I don’t know what to do in this adult world. What am I supposed to do with these children? What am I expected to do? And it was so clear and powerful that since then, whenever I heard the word “adult”, I had that weird vision coming up, and in a way I still do. I don’t have a huge kitchen, or children, I don’t even make meals for myself, and my life right now feels pretty stable, yet sometimes I do feel like that adult me from my dream, which probably reveals my immaturity or something, but I don’t claim I am a mature person, I don’t claim that I’m immature either, I guess I just don’t know. 😀 Anyway, other than that weird dream thing, I don’t think my life resembles what I thought it could be like when I was a child.
4. Do you think about dying?   Does death scare you?  Why or why not? – As a person with mental illness, I’ve experienced suicidal thoughts so yes, I do think about dying, sometimes more often, sometimes less. I’m happy to say that nowadays, I rarely have active suicidal thoughts and ideations, but I do have passive ones a lot of the time. Also I am a Christian, so when you’re a religious/spiritual person I believe you have to think about that sometimes. My own death doesn’t scare me, although I’m a little bit anxious of what it will be like afterwards, what world we’ll end up in, if any. I’m also not scared of death as a concept, like my sis Zofijka is for example. SHe’s scared of dead people, murders and such. Of course it’s difficult and can make anyone uneasy, but I normally don’t feel scared by that without any context. What I’m really really scared of about death is those whom I love dying. Particularly my Mum and Misha. Some say my attachment to Misha is unhealthy because of that, and because of how attached I am to him even though he is a pet, but I really don’t know how I could cope with Misha’s death. If I had to, I probably would, life is like that, but I’ve never been attached to anyone in such a way as I am to Misha.

Additional Gratitude Bonus Question:  Who has been the kindest to you in your life? – The kindest? Like throughout my whole life? My Mum I think. Dunno where I’d be without her, but I’ve written about that many times before.

Question of the day.

Big up someone in your life who deserves a round of applause or a big thank you. My answer:
MISHA, MISHA, MISHA!!! What would be my life without Misha? Well, I’ve lived many years without Misha, but now, with Misha, everything is so much better and more beautiful. He’s such a lovely child, he means everything to me, he has so many important functions in my life and I really don’t know what I would do if I lost him. I wish everyone could have their own Misha – be it a cat, a dog, a pet, another human being, – anything that is as important and helpful and dear for them as Misha is for me. Who would it be for you? 🙂

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What I’m thankful for.

I’ve seen many people doing those thankful posts lately, so I’m joining in today.

Here goes:

Zofijka, and that she came back from the trip. It also contributes to the fact that it’s much louder here etc. but it’s good to have her back.

My crush Gwilym Bowen Rhys, and his new album, and my current crush peak.

Misha.

Yummy food.

Good and warm weather, and my cool room.

My family.

All my online friends and pen pals.

All the beautiful Norwegian music I’ve been listening today.

tea and coffee.

Books.

My blog, blogging, my readers, other blogs I read, blogosphere in general.

My comfy bed that could be for two people, but it’s just for me and I don’t have to share it with anyone.

Kefir, orange juice, and all the other cool drinks, foods, etc.