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? 🙂

 

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? 🙂

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? 🙂

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? 🙂

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? 🙂

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.

Six months.

The time flies so fast… Today is six months since the first post on My Inner Mishmash. I can’t quite believe it! It definitely doesn’t feel like this!

I’m very happy I’m here, and that my safe space is here, and that finally, there is a place online I can really call mine, and safe. The idea that I could start a blog in another language seemed crazy to me, even for a while after I’ve already created this blog. But now I know it was the step in a definitely right direction. It feels so anyway. I also feel like it’s the most successful of my blogs in terms of reaching the audience. I don’t know how many readers, followers or commenters a typical six-month-blog gets and whether I am one of those or get more or less views, I do know though that none of my previous blogs had gotten as many people reading as this one, for various reasons, but mainly because I was blogging in quite niche places – our Polish blind communities online – where there was a slight chance anyone else could find me, other than the members of the community, unless I told them the URL, which really sucked, but a huge advantage of it was that everything was completely accessible. And with my previous WordPress blog, I failed completely at setting it up properly so that neither people could find me, nor I could actually write a single post without hours of torment, hassle, rage and frustration preceeding its publishing, because it was so unaccessible for me. If not the fact that a part of me is phlegmatic after my Dad, so I can be pretty determined and patient if I really want something, I’d surely not exist there for THREE years! 😀 I think that even if I paid someone to set up things for me and make it all polished technicaly, I wouldn’t get very many people to read my posts and certainly not 195 followers. ANd after all, I write partly for others here, because if I want to do it just for myself, I can do it in my diary. SO, yeah, I’m so very happy that my efforts aren’t pointless and that I seem to finally have settled somewhere.

I also hope that if you read my posts, you find something that can affect you in any positive way – I’d love to hear from you about how they affect you – and that you enjoy being a part of My Inner MishMash, regardless of how long you’re here.

I want to thank each one of you – those who follow my blog, read, like or comment my posts. I’m so happy you are here, and I hope you’re glad too. Particularly, I want to thank my regulars – thanks so so much to all of you for sticking with me and supporting me, it means A LOT to me, and it is hugely appreciated.

And, of course, Misha is very very grateful too for all his peep friends and pet friends, and for all his silent audience. He is so happy that some other beings finally treat him and his problems seriously.

A thank you post.

It’s been over two months since I started blogging here on My Inner MishMash and loving it. But I’m more than sure I would quit it already if you, my readers, wouldn’t encourage me with your comments, likes and follows, ’cause writing just for myself is what I’ve been already doing in my diary so wouldn’t be appealing at all online. I’m so glad you like my writing and would like to thank all of you for visiting my mish-mashy world, everyone of you my readers and (71 now already) followers. And most of all, all those of you who leave me all those interesting, constructive, encouraging and supportive comments, because of your time and engagement you put in. Thanks so much to all of you.

Also, if you have any feedback, ideas, questions… I don’t know, anything about this blog you’d like to share and you think it could contribute to its development, of course I’ll be more than happy to hear your suggestions.

Other than that, I know it’s pretty normal on blogs, whether beginning or established, that the amount of followers is bigger than commenters, but still… I’m always very curious of people as individuals. So I’d really really like to hear from you and about you, if you’ve never commented on here before. I’d love to hear your story and learn a little bit about you, as well as to hear your opinion about my humble blogging attempts, what do you like here the most and what made your decision to follow me? You’re more than welcome to share your thoughts, no matter if many or just a few words.

So yeah, thanks again to all of you, my lovely readers, I hope you feel well in My Inner MishMash and like it here. 🙂