HAPPY MAY!!

Happy first of May!! Today I finally have proper access to the internet again! 

After three long weeks of only a sporadic ability to tweet, I can once again feed my digital addiction. 

Life just keeps on giving me lemons, time to make Lemonade

My darling husband used up our data load limit in the first week of April (you tube has a lot to answer for!) and as we are rural and confined to satellite internet rules and regulations, we were unable to purchase anymore for the remainder of the month.

 

#CliveTheGuineaPig

Sadly, on our property we only get mobile phone service from half way up our driveway, so if I wanted to tweet or check emails I had to either trudge through the icy winds to the little mound where we seem to magically get 3 bars of reception or leave home entirely; and due to the school holidays, I didn’t get out much! 

Well, things have settled down here somewhat since I last posted nearly a month ago. My meds are working their magic and I have been brought down to a nice mildly hypomanic state rather than a rapidly losing control manic one.

Part of me is however waiting for the other shoe to drop, mania always eventually gives way to depression and for me, May is a month loaded with a history of depressive and suicidal episodes.    

I feel good right now and I really, really don’t want to fall back down that hole.

While I was away….

Easter came and went, my parents came up to visit and we had a huge fully cooked brunch and then did the annual “Easter Hunt Extravaganza” which is where I write a bunch of rhyming riddle clues and the kids go on a treasure hunt around the farm finding more clues until it leads them to the “Bounty” which is a giant Easter basket full of chocolate.

Mr 11, who is ever enterprising and not overly fond of chocolate, saved his stash and then slowly sold off parts of it to his siblings who had run out of their own by day two. Of course he saved approximately 50 mini eggs to take to school and sell on the playground at highly inflated prices, that kid is going places – hopefully jail isn’t one of them. 

My father in law was cutting something on the saw at work (he’s a joiner) and accidently cut the back part of his middle finger off! After waiting three days (!) for surgery, they stitched and skin grafted it and things looked great for about two weeks, unfortunately the skin graft didn’t take and things got infected, now he is playing the waiting game with daily dressing changes for another week to see if they can possibly operate again and save the top of the finger!

As if to compete with my father in law, my mother in law had a routine mammogram, they found an 'anomaly' and this led to urgent ultrasounds, core biopsies and fine needle lymph node biopsies and three excruciating days waiting to find out the test results. 

#CliveTheGuineaPig and I

I went with her to the results appointment and we were relieved to find out that what she had was actually a benign condition called a “radial scar” – they look like cancers on mammograms and apparently cancers can loiter around their edges. The lymph nodes were also given the all clear and were most likely just a little bit swollen due to a mild unrelated infection. 

There are five new fighting fish in my life, their names are Giovanni, De Vinci, Vivaldi, Monet and Picasso. These were rejects from the pet shop – ones that had come in with issues and were unsellable (clamped fins, fin rot or generally unhappy). They have been being treated according to their symptoms and are all doing really well. Except perhaps Monet, he has a habit of lying under his plastic plant playing dead, but when you poke him he quickly jumps up and acts lively for about 5 minutes before “resting” again.

"Picasso"

I survived the school holidays without becoming depressed or blowing our life savings on manic whims. Our life savings are looking fairly ordinary at the moment, so my money spending was confined to lists of ‘things to buy soon’ – of which there are many.

"DeVinci"

After that one little slip up during my “Crazy Week” I have not yet gambled again! Although I obviously am un able to take children into gaming lounges so the holidays and being relatively broke probably helped with that more than my will power actually has.

"Giovanni"

I caught up with one of my best friends from high school, she lives in New Zealand now and came home for the Easter break to visit. I love catching up with her, even though we only see each other every few years we can launch straight into deep and meaningful conversations within minutes and it's like we were never apart.

"Vivaldi"

Unfortunately, I also fell of the self-harm wagon, it had been a really long time too. This was before my meds had kicked in properly, I was very manic and Bel (the name I give the part of me that fuels my eating disorder) was in my ear frequently and loudly with regards to preserving my recent weight loss and harsh judgements from the fear of re gaining it. 

One night at about three in the morning I ended up eating a stack of left over Easter chocolate then overwhelmed by what I had done and overcome by Bel’s fury I turned to old habits. Self-harm for me tends to be punishment rather than release. I was doubly punished though because the chocolate I gorged wasn’t gluten free and so as well as fresh scars, I also ended up with a killer migraine and on the toilet for half the next day.

"Monet"

 I took Mr 14 into the city with five of his friends so they could see a movie and look around the shops. Luckily I was still pretty manic so we had the music pumping the whole way there, that was a LOUD car ride! While I was waiting for them I met up with my parents for lunch and then went for a walk around the lake near the shopping centre. The lighting was AMAZING and I took a stack of photos.

So that’s some of what has been happening at my place, I kept writing for sanity even though I couldn’t publish anything, I wrote a couple of half posts I need to tweak, a ton of poetry and some random rap lyrics – I will probably share these at some point in the near future (maybe not the rap song…) Oh and I was even witness to a *murder!

*Of Crows

I hope all you guys are all doing well, now that the kids are back at school and I am back online I will endeavour to find some time to catch up on blog posts and pod casts! 

Peace, Kate xoxo