I’m feeling ill still and doing admin at home today. The plan is to get everything ready to drive over to Melbourne for the congress with Rose on the weekend. Tonks is gradually improving, she has started eating again and moving around the place on her own. Zoe helped out with the admin but sleeping in amusing formations on the couch.
So another sinus infection stakes it’s claim on my face. The locum reckons it’s going bacterial but my enthusiasm to take antibiotics again is negligible. I’m run down and tired and already have thrush so thanks but no thanks! I’ve cancelled work for the next few days as I’m developing signs of a chest infection too. Have to be well enough to drive to Melbourne for the hearing voices congress next week!
Rose has also been sick with gastro, mercifully brief but horribly unpleasant, so we’ve been unhappy comrades in arms for a few days. She’s also been under a lot of badly timed job stress. Yesterday I spent half of it winning medals for being the most useful and supportive girlfriend, and the second half winning medals for being the most overwrought and unhelpful girlfriend. Dammit. Oddly enough when I crashed she rallied in that funky little see-saw turn taking thing couples can do. Thankfully!
My life only tends to work out in small windows before the next really bad thing happens. This makes me pretty anxious and reactive to a whole bunch of triggers suggesting a new crash is about to happen. I once went to see a shrink for help to make new friends. I knew I had DID but wasn’t out about it to anyone, rather was deeply deeply afraid of anyone finding out. I talked with this shrink about how lonely and emotionally unstable I was. We talked about a common painful dynamic for me at the time – having a moment of really good connection with someone, perhaps a new acquaintance, and going home feeling like things are looking up! Excited about my future, really happy with how the conversation went, reassured that I would make new friends. And then the dawning realisation over the next days of weeks that this wasn’t the case. The wonderful day was not the start of a new life, not a sign of good things to come. It was an exception. That friend would be busy for the rest of the year. The acquaintance wouldn’t come back to uni. The compliment from the boss didn’t mean I was going to be rostered on for more shifts.
The shrink advised me to live entirely in the moment. To take everything at face value only and stop hoping that life would get better. It’s the hope that makes you unstable she advised me. Stop thinking about the future. She was right, of course. Her solution was a bit drastic. At the time, without hope that life would get better, I would have killed myself. The instability was painful but worth it for me.
Narrative therapy is a fascinating field I’d love to know more about. A kernel of an idea about it is this : the stories we tell about our lives and who we are are profoundly powerful. In my life two stores compete for my attention. One is a story of hope and acceptance. That how others have hurt me is not my fault. That it is not a failure to be poor, or sick, or hurting. That life can and does get better after awful things have happened, that scars and hearts heal and love and joy live alongside anguish.
The other sorry is darker. That I am broken. Fatally flawed. Doomed. That nothing I can do, not my best efforts, all my strength, all my love, can stop the dark. That nothing works out for me. Life requires risks and my risks send me tumbling into ravines.
This story has weight for me, a lot of evidence behind it. It becomes something I watch for, signs my world is ending again. A dark foreboding. A quiet despair in my heart. So I make plans, wonderful plans for my life. And I have nightmares, where Rose dies, where our child is terminally ill, or abused, where we both end up homeless with little kids in the back seat of the car. The dark eats my dreams. A little voice inside says if you’re thinking of having kids soon, you’ve got a shrinking window in which to kill yourself before you leave them with the burden of a dead mother.
This is horrible and people are often horrified when I talk about it. They try and reassure me that life is better now. But once bad things have happened to you, you know in your bones, they can again. It haunts me. In a weird way it’s a relief when they do happen and I can stop waiting for them, stop being encouraged to believe in an ideology about good things happening to deserving people that I know is mostly an illusion.
That relief reminds of the cycle of domestic violence. You get the slow building tension, then the rage/abuse/violence, then the honeymoon period where everything is wonderful. Then the tension builds again. People get so stressed and exhausted by the tension building stage, the paranoia it inspires, the knowledge that violence is inevitable, that they sometimes deliberately act to trigger it.
So, I’m in a DV cycle with the universe? (Is that what the crisis driven aspect of Borderline Personality Disorder is about?)
Last night, sobbing hysterically as Rose sang to me and rubbed my back, I understood how hard I work to keep believing in hope. Not a pollyana hope, a darker kind of hope. That my life, even with pain, will have meaning. That choices I make count. That I have some power to bring light into my life. That I can build a philosophy that understands loss, death, and failure, so that they wound but do not destroy me. That I can live in today, and dream, and if the sky falls tomorrow I can howl then. Keep building the ideas of failure and tragedy into my world, into my hope, into my love. Keep chasing freedom when the trap closes about me. Get help to hold back the dark. Someone to hold me when the nightmares come.
Tonks has also had a rough day. We took him to the vet this morning to be desexed only to discover that he is a she. She’s now sleeping on a shelf in my studio with her fancy new cone. Poor love.
It’s been a roller coaster few days here, seriously! I’m in a really weird place at the moment where some of my friends are going through hell while others are feeling like life is going their way. I’m mostly doing really well, which creates an odd kind of survivors guilt at times. Changes are afoot in all directions… I’ve been fortunate enough to secure a couple of big contracts for my business, which is extremely exciting. A lot of hard work is starting to pay off and I finally have money to do things like pay for an accountant! I’m working hard at the massive amount of admin this generates, and if you don’t look at the state of my house, not falling behind too badly.
My beloved dissociation support group Bridges is currently taking its first holiday in two years, which is very sad on one level but rather exciting on another… Those of us who have put so many hours into running it are all feeling stretched lately, it’s very tough work being a volunteer peer worker when you have so many other things going on in your life, great things like work, or awful things like sickness and system stress. My goal at the moment is to ease the transition as gently and respectfully as possible for everyone involved, then get back together as people are ready and talk about what next. I’ve set aside a reduced number of volunteer hours a week for myself this year, only ten, and I’m a bit excited about what we can do with that… The format of the whole DI Inc may change too… Everyone involved is deeply passionate and believes that we need an organisation to educate and speak on our behalf, but the truth of the matter is that no one actually wants to run one… We all have other passions, like giving presentations, or education, or creative projects. We’ve only found ourselves in an organisation because that’s the format we were provided with. But it’s hard work, and everyone, me included, has other stuff going on. So, change is happening, which is hard, but also feels good to me, flexible, adaptive, responsive, not locking people into to approaches that aren’t working but looking for new ways to harness that passion without exhausting and depleting the amazing people behind it.
I’m having trouble keeping up with my work at the moment and not getting much time off, but the night before last I invited some friends over to Rose’s place for a games night, and we had a great time. I love games nights, they’re fun, inexpensive, and just about guarantee a good laugh. 🙂
We made toasties for dinner and some people ordered pizza. I really enjoyed myself.
I’m glad I did because Rose had a rough evening with some trauma stuff and I did my best to be supportive. I drove home at midnight and started cleaning my kitchen up, only to discover that my manhole cover in my ceiling had been opened up! No one knows who did it, which is very creepy. So Rose calmed me down over the phone, and Zoe was worth her weight in gold. She may be a total nuisance at times, but nights like that she makes up for it in spades. There’s no other way I could have slept in my own home that night. Tonks did his bit by cuddling up to me. I didn’t get to sleep until around 5am, and then had a horrific series of nightmares, waking regularly, before giving up around 1pm and getting up. I sat out in my garden with some breakfast to clear my head and that worked wonders.
So here are some of the heroes of the night, looking suave:
When I started to hallucinate a few songs, Rose reminded me that Zoe would react if they were real. That was very helpful to remember. A friend of mine who struggles with psychosis used to call her dog her Multidimensional Seeing Eye Dog because of this truly wonderful reality testing quality. I’ve always loved the phrase, there’s truth and a wry humour to it. Pets are amazing.
It’s been a brilliant day here! I provided body art for a mental health stigma reduction event this morning, secured a whole bunch more gigs this afternoon (I am busy! I am basically booked out for all of October!), then collected the mail which included my new exciting dog crate which will make it possible, I hope, to sleep over other places including camping with Zoe!! I also got my new henna aftercare cards, my new updated post cards, and my new cheapie fountain pen to replace my lovely lost one. I feel like a poet again! One cannot be a poet without a fountain pen. Well… it’s better to have one anyway.
Then I did a whole lot more business admin (Sarsaparilla helped)
And read a bit more about anarcho-syndicalism to see how it might be relevant for creating powerful groups in mental health, more indepth info here. Tonight I’m going to hang out with friends and have pizza. Tomorrow I’m going to sleep. It’s been good day. 🙂
Today I helped a friend paint walls, and then did grocery shopping and a lot of admin. Because I like you, I’m not going up talk about it. Instead, you’re getting photos of babies and kittens. You are lucky!
My gorgeous god daughter Sophie is nearly one now and had figured out how to crawl. Every week when I visit I feel closer to her. I love holding her and playing with her. I was a little worried at first that maybe is only bond to her as a tiny baby and detach as she grew older, but the reserve seems to be happening, I’m more comfortable and confident and in love each time I see her.
Given my own baby plans in blessed to be inheriting get outgrown clothes and belongings. This week I was given her delightful pea green carrier! I adore this. The rest of our baby stash is living in Rose’s shed, but the carrier came home to my place where I can admire it. Tonks decided to try it out for size. Provided no babies are allergic to cats I think we’re going to be okay 🙂 What we do about bouffy Zoe I really don’t know.
So there, don’t ever say I’m not good to you. 🙂
I can’t really say the same. This is what my loungeroom currently looks like. I’m also columns deep into various excel spreadsheets, trying to sort out all the records for my business. I didn’t know how to set this up when I fell into my business last year, so it’s a nightmare mess. I’ve been at it all for a lot of hours now and I’m starting to flag. I have paperwork due tomorrow that I simply can’t get ready in time without the help of an accountant, which I’m in the process of organising. Still, I’m making progress, and I haven’t had a panic attack. I think that once I’ve got my record keeping paperwork and files set up, I’ll be okay, data entry is fine it’s knowing what records need keeping and trying to work out an efficient way of keeping them that’s causing so much of the stress.
I’m keeping pretty cool because last night I had a great time out at my local goth club. Bit of a boost before the crushing reality of our modern ‘paperless’ office, ha. Here’s the face paint I designed for the occasion:
And, as promised, a photo of Tonks. He and Sars are getting along really well these days. Here they are cuddling on my couch. He’s currently asleep on my pile of paperwork marked ‘VIP Business Docs’.
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I’m down at the local dog park with Zoe at the moment. It’s dark, there’s no lights in the park, and we’re the only ones here. The above photo is from a short camping trip we did recently; Zoe, myself, Rose, and my sister. It’s the first time I’ve been camping with her, she really loved it. Sharing the responsibility between three of us helped no end as well. She’s been going pretty well lately. There’s a bit of a routine settling in, she gets a lot of walks or run time each week. She’s still not as happy as I’d like to see her, but with my small yard and no other dogs for company, I think this is as good as it gets for her for now. Hopefully in the future her world will be a bit brighter…
Change is afoot. The three of us (well, and Zoe) are talking about moving in together. Rose and I want to share a house and settle into living together as we make plans for a baby in the future. My sister is a wonderful person and loves kids too, having her so close could help so much to stabilise and strengthen our family. I’ve been reading lately about different family structures, families where kids have two mums, or two mums and a dad, or two mums and two dad’s all living together or close by and all sharing the load. It’s really exciting to me, this shift away from a single person or pair being responsible for everything about a child. We used to have extended family networks involved, a whole tribe of people present and invested. Blood family isn’t always a good option for that. Being able to form your own tribes makes all the sense in the world to me.
The choices before us about housing are difficult. There’s very few ways we can move forward and all retain some housing security. Moving my beautiful, hard working, slightly vulnerable girlfriend into my little unit with my homophobic neighbour is a poor option. Bouncing between two houses with both of us working so much at the moment is getting harder and harder. She was going to visit tonight but didn’t sleep well after a night shift. So I’m here at the dog park in the dark, while she’s at her house trying to get a few more hours at least until she’s safe to drive. I don’t have enough money for fuel to collect her. I wish we were close, wish I could just sit in her bed and plait her hair. I wish I wasn’t looking at giving up a ten year lease in my unit for the hope of a future that might collapse in so many different ways. I wish the risks were smaller.
For now, we think, and plan, and dream, and look around at how other people are doing this, the many creative ways families are made, love patchworking our fragmented culture back together. Somewhere between the love that binds us and the need for freedom there is a way to love and be loved with integrity and creativity. For now, things are good.
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I’ve been working very hard again on my admin list. One of the more fun things I did today was finally spend an art voucher I won for an ink painting last year, on a new set of brushes for temporary skin tattoos. Then I sorted a box and a set of holders for them.
Very swish! The tattoo i created on myself in the workshop is still going strong, ten days later and a camping trip included!
In other news I accidentally whacked my face on a gate handle the other day and feel like someone hit me with a steel pole!
I’ve had a lot of trouble with my blog all of a sudden and had to migrate it across to WordPress while I try to fix things. The links may or may not work for you but at least the content is safe. It’s my lovely girlfriend Rose’s birthday today and I’m making the cake so I’ll probably be around Facebook more than the blog for a couple of days. The recent camping trip was great but tiring, it’s a lot of work for such a short stay. I’m hoping to get back to Broken Hill shortly to catch up with my favourite poets. One last photos for today: Rose bought me a beautiful rainbow swirl hand dyed bedspread which has just arrived in the post… Tonks approves too.
I was feeling a bit bad lately about how I’m posting up photos of Tonks but so few of Zoe or Sars lately. Then I remembered that Sars visits for about 1/2hr a day total (3 ten min visits generally to eat) and Zoe is bloody difficult to capture on film, even with the sports/action mode. I took about 50 photos today to get a few good ones of her, and that was with my sister holding her on the lead! Here’s a small sampling of what my usual efforts to photograph her look like:
Now I’m going to think about dinner and putting colours in my hair.
I’ve been busy painting at zoos and working on my paint kit and website lately. The business is going well, particularly considering that winter is the quiet time for this kind of work. I think I’m going to be very busy with it this summer! There’s a 2 days a week job that I’ve been keeping an eye on for ages and now I have to decide whether to go for it or not… it’s a hard call! The job is working as the women’s worker supporting newly identifying GLBTIQ people… pretty much my dream job… but I’m very busy also getting a new very exciting small business off the ground, and I have a lot of art projects I’m keen to sink my teeth into soon. Hrummmmm.
I keep thinking about Neil Gaimon’s advice in an awesome speech he gave (here) about how to reach your dreams – to treat your big dream (like, say, I want to be a professional artist) as a mountain you’re heading towards. Every time you have to make a career or life decision, you ask yourself if the choice in front of you is taking you closer towards, or further away from, your mountain. I think one of my challenges is that I currently have about 20 mountains… which is awesome… but does make decisions like this difficult.
So, thinking for now, and working on the People Painting business. I’ve revamped the website, updated photos, rewritten my rates information page, and added a whole new page for party theme ideas! I’m pretty damn proud of myself and have a lot more ideas buzzing about my brain. Actually I’ve been either buzzing or asleep lately, somewhere between exuberant and slightly manic. It’s fun but also a little wearing.
I painted at the Adelaide Zoo the other day, with a price set for me of $3.50 per face. That’s very low, and meant I needed to create a host of simpler designs that could be painted more quickly. I was a bit stressed about it but also kind of enjoyed the challenge. I wound up painting the most amazing collection of neon rainbow animals… the panda in particular looked incredible!
It’s a beautiful day out there… and I have so much admin and so many errands to run. But I’ve had only one hours’ sleep and I’m fading fast, so I think I’m going to leave it all behind and go and hide out in bed. I’ll leave with one last photo of kitteny goodness. 🙂
Oh, all right, a bunch of photos then… Tonks is going great. His sister, who has been named Kiki, comes over for a visit regularly and they have a great time chasing each other around the unit. Here he is last night, exploring the awesome new cat tree Rose has let me borrow. 🙂 Zoe is doing much better now I’ve been able to get her to the dog park for a good run a couple of times. She’s still restless but it’s taken the edge off. Sarsaparilla is fighting every cat in the neighbourhood and constantly coming home wounded. I’m desperate to put together a cat run to keep him in. He hates being trapped in the house and cries at the door for hours, and then seriously gets destructive. Hopefully I can pull that off for him soon.
My health started to improve just in time to pull off a day off work at Monarto Zoo, cleared of being a contagious risk but still exhausted, so Rose kindly drove me there and back. It was a quiet day due to wet weather but I was so happy to be back in the saddle. 
Friends have been very kind in bringing me soup and tissues and helping run vital errands for me which has made all the difference in the world, especially when I’ve been feeling so lonely and missing out on so many wonderful things… Like my college classes. Term finished last week and I’m going to fail my classes as I simply couldn’t get there for weeks. 😦 I’ve been worried that the depression would return but it seems not, which is brilliant and a little surprising. 🙂 I have a lot more days of work lined up over the next few weeks and I’m determined to make it to all of them. I’ve been working more on my kit and business stuff, my new lovely ‘aftercare’ cards for the face paints have now arrived! 
The business is going well and I’m still very excited and inspired by it.
My sister has arrived home from a 5 year stint overseas, and I’ve been almost hysterical with excitement. We’re close friends and I’ve missed her terribly. We’ve had a great time hanging out this week and she’s got to meet Rose and Tonks and Zoe and some of my other friends. We also kept our arrangement to go out clubbing last weekend despite her being jetlagged and exhausted and me being really rather unwell still… We dressed up and went off to a trash glitter themed night at the local goth club. 
I’m continuing to practice applying face paints on myself in the mirror and I’m not bad at it! 
I restrained myself to dancing to five songs only and having only one drink, and enjoyed listening to the music and taking some surprisingly good photos with my phone camera. 
It was an awesome night. 🙂
Health wise I’m continuing to improve! Most of the infections have cleared up and I’ve finished the antibiotics at last. The fibro is still really rough and the jaw pain likewise. I have physio and dental appointments lined up soon, which will help and make it worse respectively. I’m still very, very tired and prone to weakness and dizziness so I’m still not driving yet. I’m hopeful and being patient. More difficult is my sleeping, I’ve become completely nocturnal, not getting to sleep until between 6 – 8am. I’ve been unable to shift the pattern which is giving me some grief, particularly when I’m getting up at 8 to go face paint for 5 or so hours. 😦 I’m not having much success at napping either so I’m struggling with sleep deprivation.
Psychologically I’m going pretty well. The sense of excitement and creativity and optimism about my business, relationships and future is really high considering the rough couple of months I’ve had. I’ve missed a lot of shrink appointments and I’m keen to go and talk again, but there’s no sense of crisis. My brain is pretty busy, ticking over a mile a minute, I’m writing again and coming up with creative ideas and things I want to do when I’m a little better… There’s still a sense of freedom and joy inside which is kind of amazing.
Zoe has had a rough month with very few walks. She’s been destructive and whining and barking and generally driving me mad but I know she just needs a walk and I’ve been really good at being able to keep my cool. I’ve booked her for a full day of doggy day care this week as a treat. Sars is fighting every cat in the neighbourhood and constantly coming home with scars and fur missing and sometimes a nasty wound gone ick. I’m really keen to get him settled in a cat run while he still has both his ears! Tonks is going great, his little sister cat visits with my sister often, which he loves. He’s very spoilt by me, Rose, and my friends, one of whom is his godmother and brings gifts and plays with him. 🙂 He’s sweet and adventurous and usually sleeps on my knees or curled up on my pillow. 
So, you’re up to date now I reckon. I’m buzzing with art project ideas and looking forward to rearranging the house and enjoying the face painting gigs and patiently getting better. Hurrah for that.
Ah well. Tonks is delightful, the abscess on Sarsaparilla’s ear has healed up, saving me a vet trip thankfully. Salt water washes and betaine did their job. Zoe is miserably cooped up without her regular walk. Friends have been helping out with meals and chores as they can. Rose helped me find and clean the large puddle of kitten pee from behind the couch. I’m sleeping okay, just not at night. It could be worse!
I’m planning projects for when I feel better – I want to finish planting out all my new little seedlings, hopefully before they die. I’m terribly excited about my sister coming home from her 5 year stay overseas – she’s in the air as I type tonight! I’m planning a re arrange of my house with quite a major reshuffle of my sleep area. I currently have a queensize bed tucked into the small bedroom of my unit. It just fits by being pushed right against the wall on three sides. This has been okay-ish, but I’ve had enough of it. Rose is doing night shifts with her new job, I’m noctural and ill and spending a lot of time in bed, it’s a pain to make it when you can’t walk around it, whoever sleeps against the wall has to climb over the other person to get in or out… and more importantly sometimes the sense of being trapped is just too stressful for either of us to be comfortable in that spot. There’s been a couple of memorable rough nights with screaming nightmares and totally disorientated wakeups that I’m pretty keen not to repeat. We do have the lounge as a backup place to sleep for those nights that trauma stuff or multiplicity stuff makes sleeping in the same bed a bad option, but it’s not our preferred option and some nights we’d like to be in the same bed, we just need to both be able to easily get in and out to be comfortable. It’s worth the upheaval to me to be able to accommodate this kind of deep seated trauma stress.
So, tonight I was roaming my unit with a tape measure, trying to work out where else I could fit my bed. As it turns out, not many places. The master bedroom or the loungeroom are my only options. I’m loathe to pull my studio space in the master bedroom apart, but the lounge presents issues of its own. I’m thinking at this point that I may separate my studio into a couple of different parts and that way be able to move it into different areas. There’s the storage aspect – big shelves of boxes of supplies – I don’t need these to be immediately to hand. It’s sufficient to go and grab the box of supplies for that project at any time. I wish they could go in the shed but unfortunately, it’s not very large, not tall enough to fit the shelves, and most importantly, not waterproof and prone to flooding in winter. Then there’s my ‘wet’ table and big easel – these are for my paints and other wet messy types of art such as gluing or plaster or polymer clay work. Lastly there’s my ‘dry’ table. This is for everything where a perfectly dry, smooth surface on the table is essential, such as ink paintings, and needlework. I’m thinking that the inks for my arts and my journals could all be put together in the bedroom space as I usually do a lot of writing in bed and sketch with inks in my notebooks likewise. It’s a space for poetry and haiga and ink art and wrist poems. Then perhaps the wet art could happen in another area of the house… I’m somewhat tempted to pull all my collection of bookshelves into the small bedroom and turn that into a library/cat tree/nook. It’s got terrible light as the shed blocks the window so it’s not suitable as an art space at all. I do love light and windows, and I’m keen to use mine to their best. I’d love a spot to eat breakfast by a window (in bed is fine!), and a place for art by a window with good light.
Lastly, I need to move my computer area from the nook behind my front door. This is the draughty-est place in my home and I spend too many hours here in the wee morning hours, chilling. Fixing the draught isn’t easy due to unusual design of the door and I’m restless for a change anyway so I’m looking around. Perhaps a computer/library room? It’s fun to plan, even though at the moment the walk to the sink to refill my water bottle is as much as I can manage. Thankfully I still have library books, and a kitten is a constant source of either cuddles or diversion. Life goes on.
I have a kitten, and a chest infection. Life is awesome, and it sucks. I’m sleeping in my armchair tonight because I’m in danger of drowning when I lie down. Somehow I’ve graduated from breathing air to a mix of razor blades and wall paper paste. I’m mostly doing ok except for moments when I run out of patience with all this and curl into a small ball to cry.
Rose took Zoe and myself to the dog park this afternoon (trying to make sure the pre – existing pets don’t feel left out) where a great dane harassed her. He’d flip get onto her back and nip at her stomach, growling. It didn’t get real bad but she was stressed so we put the lead back on her to maintain some level of control in splitting them up. She was snarling and unhappy with hackles up, ears back, and tail tucked tightly between her legs. The owner of the dane was ignoring it. Frustratingly the folks there harassed us instead of helping out. Several told us off for having her on the lead and one tried to tell us the lead was the problem. Felt painfully visible as a ‘gay couple’. Zoe was interacting fine with all the other dogs but it wasn’t playful with the dane. We left and walked her in a park on lead instead, then took her to another dog park we hadn’t tried before. That went well, when a couple of the dogs got a bit stressed with each other, both owners split them up and put them back on leads for a few minutes until they were settled and distracted. Then they played fine. I think we’ll be going back there instead. This is what most of my attempts to get a photo of Zoe at a dog park look like:
It’s startling how vulnerable I felt at the first dog park tonight, that sense once again that I live in a bubble where it is normal to be gay, mentally ill, disabled… And outside that bubble are people who don’t like it, accept it, understand it, and wouldn’t protect me. Some of whom would hurt me.
Dog parks are a mixed deal. To let Zoe run off lead and pay with other dogs is a joy! Nothing in the world makes her happier. But things go wrong too. There’s a lot of dogs who don’t know each other running around. Some people bring intact dogs and bitches in heat to parks. Some people just let the dogs go and do no supervising. Occasionally things get out of hand and sometimes dogs get hurt.
I’m watchful with Zoe, she’s a boufy bouncy pup still and can scare little dogs. If she’s playing roughly I put her back on a lead, so the smaller dog can run up to her to pay, and get away from her easily if it’s getting overwhelmed. It’s worked well so far and she’s been great. This dane is a big dominating dog who picks one dog out of the park to chase down, and will continue even if the other dog gets really stressed. I’ve watched it bowl a dog over to chew playfully on its ears for an hour until the other dog was really unhappy. I’ve seen it bail a stressed dog up on the table where the smaller dog has hackles up, is snarling, barking, and whining. It’s play for him, if he wanted to hurt them they’d be hurt. But if it’s not play for other dog anymore, it’s not play. It’s not fun, it’s not okay. At some point a stressed smaller dog will really bite him, and then things will go downhill badly. My job is to keep Zoe out of that kind of situation. It was kind of scary to have a whole group of dog owners there who didn’t get that.
Makes me think how often we’re still trying to get that message across in so many different areas of human life – play is only play when both parties are having fun. If only one of you is having fun we call it other things.
He’s 8 weeks old, and kittenish. Playful, adventurous, gets through surprisingly small holes, and sleeps a lot. We’re using his cat carrier as a bed which he loves.
This is his favourite toy mouse.
Zoe is mad with excitement and is taking a lot of energy. Rose and I are taking turns – one of us babysits the kitten, the other sits with Zoe. She is being kept in her pen with her bed and toys, and treated whenever she settles. The high pitched excited whining she’s been doing for most of the evening is not making a restful night’s sleep particularly likely. o.O Here’s hoping.
Cool hey 🙂 and I took Zoe to the first dog park either of us have ever been to… It was nerve wracking but wonderful and she had a great time. I’m hoping to go back often. Rose helped me get out of the house and down to some markets this morning. It was good to get out into the sunshine, felt a little weird and surreal. I’m sort of ok and sort of wildly fragile at the moment. I cooked tea last night, a type of cabbage soup, for Rose who found herself working an 11 hour shift when things fell through at work. Then I made her life easier by becoming genuinely hysterical about being so sick at the moment. After pain relief, the distress settles. It’s a pattern we’re seeing a lot. So it was nice to plod about the markets instead. I bought a warm winter jumper with some face painting money, and a scoop of ice cream. All in all it hasn’t been a bad day. 
This find in a shop recently tickled my fancy. Whatever it is, it’s apparently a quality one.
Rose is on the improve thankfully, I am still very sore particularly with the jaw pain, which I suspect may be separate from the sinusitis and possibly my tmjoint in my jaw playing up as well. Oh joy!
I am not in too bad spirits at the moment, I’ve watched a lot of movies, killed orcs in my new favourite computer game Orcs Must Die 2, read some really awesome library books, and napped a lot. Sarsaparilla has had a lovely time snoozing on my bed and cuddling up to my little teddy bear, Joe.
Bless ‘im. 🙂
I also bought a new toy for Zoe to try and reduce her anxious skin licking and foot chewing (on herself, not on me) which so far she seems to love:
And this blog post was bought you by the letter Q, the number 4, and the cat who helpfully sat on my keyboard for most of it:
He’s still pissing on things in the house. It’s a good thing he’s so adorable really.
I woke yesterday from strange dreams where I was homeless again, running from people who wanted to hurt me. I was living in the streets in a dark, crowded world, trying to stay hidden and find somewhere safe. When I woke I found the fibro pain was present but the sinus pain easing, and a melancholy message from Rose on my phone. I sent her poems about sadness and hope. Then I got up, made a cup of green and cranberry tea, turned my armchair to face my garden through the window, and got out my pen to write. For this, I had more company than perhaps I would have wished. It had been wet the night before so the garden was pearled and fragrant. Poems and ink flowed. I’ve had some very interesting conversations lately and things are starting to gel in my mind about why this depression has come. It’s calming my heart, helping me find ways through. Sometimes it helps more to talk with old friends who know me well than the shrinks who do not. Things are moving inside, my system is shifting and responding. I’m starting to see a path. I’m writing again.
It’s not over. There’s still anguish inside. I’m still moving slowly, underwater, fragile and lost. I don’t recognise friends, I’m disconnected from my life, choices, goals, dreams. But I perceive a relationship between hope and hopelessness. With the dreams of a bright future now comes also the dread certainty of loss. Listening to both those voices, both songs, the dark and bright, the singing and the screaming in my heart.
Yesterday I sat by my window and remembered what it was like to live in a caravan. Permeable to sound, cold, heat , mosquitoes. Cramped, delightful, stressful with noise in the early morning, people walking past my windows, garden dying in the heat. But I loved it, the river nearby, the solitude, the bath a short walk away, pots of basil and of jonquils. I can find that again, that joy in an imperfect and temporary home. It’s not what I’ve been dreaming of for this house, not my safe forever home, but I can find that acceptance again. I can let my dreamers enjoy the space, the studio, the garden. It’s not so rotten and tainted that there’s no stars at all here. I can live more lightly in the space, less fear, I’m a temporary warden only. Garden for those who will come after me. Climb trees, go camping, sleep under stars when I need to. It need not be a cage or trap. I can let the old dream go, the hope for years of security go. It can be imperfect and beautiful.
The plan is now to go on to advanced training and later on, agility classes, and to work on finding her new friends to hang out with and play as she is clearly quite lonely for other dog company. We’re also going to work on the first sleepovers at Rose’s place with her, when we feel strong enough. 🙂 I can’t leave her alone at night so I’m pretty house bound unless I put her in a kennel, which is a pretty horrible place for her to be. Hopefully I’ll get her used to travelling and sleeping in a crate and that will open doors to camping etc again. 🙂
It’s been very hard work but I have learned a lot and owe a huge debt of gratitude to the trainers who’ve helped us out. When I go down to the beach at 1am to sit and write poetry, I’m grateful to have a lovely dog there who sticks by me and makes me feel very safe. Rose and I can walk hand in hand with Zoe almost anywhere and be free from harassment. She’s affectionate and sweet and full of life. It’s still a challenge some days, when Rose is sick but I have to go home to look after Zoe, when I’m exhausted and in pain and she needs a walk, when Zoe refuses to stop harassing the poor cat, or eats something off the washing line. But, many days are good days, with a routine that works, good walks, cuddles on the couch, and a happy dog.
Had a pretty good day today. It was hard coming home from the Fair to my stressful housing situation and my anxiety had been sky high lately. Rose visited and kept me company through a stressful appointment. I took her out for a treat at my favourite cafe. In a burst of energy I pruned, mowed, swept, and tidied my front yard, then re-washed the load of wet laundry that had been sitting in a basket for several days and yet to be hung out, this time it actually made it into the line. We all went down to the beach and did an hour of training, Zoe has her test for Basic training class this Saturday. She’s going very well with one small but significant glitch – she has almost no capacity to pay attention when other dogs are around, they’re just too interesting. This is going to make the test in class rather interesting.
The evening was spent lying on the couch watching the Hobbit. My pain levels are down, I’ve Zoe sleeping on my legs, I’ve decided to sleep on the couch tonight so she can sleep with me. My neighbour has done nothing more antisocial than chuck a bunch of leaves and garden debris over the fence in a week. My psychiatrist was nice to me when I went in on Monday very stressed and teary. Things are challenging but okay.
I’ve been working on a new mental health approach… Learning to accept even my own lack of self acceptance on my rough days. To have a less perfectionistic, and a more compassionate stance towards my mental health troubles. It’s okay to have issues, even the self loathing kind. If I can’t always stop me from hating myself, maybe I can at least break the spiral where I hate myself for hating myself. So far it’s helping.
Sarsaparilla is adapting to life as a indoor cat. He is terribly cuddly and affectionate, which is making my heart sing. He now often sleeps on my bed at night and on my lap during the day if I’m home. There have been some teething issues, he’s determined, for example, that he should be able to sit on the windowsill above the kitchen sink to catch the evening sun. I’m determined that cats don’t belong on kitchen benches. After 1 glass of milk spilled onto the bed from the bedside table, 1 incident of peeing in the bed (by the cat, not myself), and a total of 7 glasses knocked off the windowsill and broken this week, I’ve capitulated. That spot on the window sill over the kitchen sink is his spot, and I’m moving the remaining glasses elsewhere. Apart from that, he’s gorgeous, and the new situation is a lot safer.
The one night a week down the beach plan has been working well, not just for Zoe but for myself also. The other night, Zoe, Rose and I met down by a beach by Roses’ home and went for a long walk in the evening, talking about our lives. We checked the beach carefully for dead fish (there’s been some dead fish washing up on beaches here lately, which in the case of the puffer fish can be very dangerous) then let Zoe run. At one point we found a nice flat rock to sit on and had hot chai latte from my new thermos.
We also trialed something very exciting – taking Zoe to visit at Rose’s home. Zoe has been too wild to try this with until now, but she was great! She sniffed around a bit:
(Pictured here wearing her swanky new red and black front-leading harness that we love) …and then settled down to sleep on a blanket in one corner of the room. Wow.
I think we are ready to get into crate training! In fact, I think she’s taken to having her own bed within sight of wherever I’m sleeping so well that we don’t really need a crate, more just a visual barrier… I’m looking into dog pens on eBay rather than the crates as you can still pat the dog, easily place in treats and toys etc… on the other hand she may just decide to leap out if the temptation – like a cat in the room – is just too great for her. Don’t know, still thinking. I do love the idea of having her with me on cold mornings at markets, sitting on her bed in her pen where kids can pat her if they want to, instead of crated away…
She is doing incredibly well, walking her is becoming a joy that I look forward to. 🙂 She is walking with a loose lead for almost the entire length of 20 – 30 minute walks! I took her out after the Microbusiness Operations class finished (last class, hurrah!!) and before running off to a delicious dinner with Rose, my friend, and goddaughter Sophie. I realised then that she is actually quite unsocialised around strangers as she shied anxiously away from people getting too close. I’ve walked her mainly after dark in the evenings and she’s clearly lacking some exposure to normal daytime activities on the street. So we’re going to rectify that over the next few weeks. I’m really looking forward to dog school again on Saturday. 🙂
My longer term goal for him is to build a cat run around my big peppercorn tree out the back, and confine him to the run and house. I’m unhappy about him killing birds (even though it is almost exclusively pigeons as far as I’m aware), eating them means he picks up a lot of parasites, and I’ve been told by a neighbour that he is eating her cat’s food on occasion, which has been dosed with thyroid meds. That can’t be good for him!
Tonight he came inside and came looking for me, snuggled onto my lap, buried his face in the crook of my arm and snoozed. I’m thrilled and a little worried about the behaviour change. I’ve decided to trial confining him to the house for now and have closed the window he uses to get in and out of the house and found his old litter tray out in the shed. So far so good, he’s snuggled up on my bed asleep. 
He really is the sweetest, most adorable cat. I hope I can set things up for him a lot better very soon and that he’ll be happy and safer.
My little family is starting to work out! 🙂
Sarah K Reece 