I think there’ll be two posts from me today because I’ve got things to tell you about but I’ve also got an important announcement to make and I don’t want it all mixed up in one post because that wouldn’t be very tidy at all now would it?
I’ll go with the important announcement first.
Are you ready?
Pause for WeeGee to clear her throat in a ceremonious fashion…….
Sometime last week I achieved the impressive milestone of my 200th post on How do you eat an elephant? Not bad for a part time blogger who was completely MENTAL for the first seven months, eh?
An awful lot has happened since I first sat down to write last April. Granted, some of it has been pretty bad, but on reflection I can’t help but thinking that most of it has actually been pretty damn good. I’ve come an awful long way and – WEEGEE IS ABOUT TO BE A BIT SENTIMENTAL WARNING – I just wanted to say that I really don’t think I’d have got to where I am without the support of my WordPress friends. You really are an AWESOME bunch who I’m very, very lucky to have bumped in to. Thanks so very much, I love you all, and if anyone would like a hug they can definitely have a WeeGee shaped one today.
I promise not to come over all sentimental and unnecessary again until my 300th post or one year blogging anniversary (whichever comes first).
Just a quick one from me tonight – I’m afraid I haven’t given it too much thought so it might be a little rough around the edges.
Today I have mostly been having a quiet day to myself: I took the day off work and focused on a) sorting my money out, b) sorting myself out and c) doing stuff that I like doing. I’ve pretty much achieved all three so I think today counts as a rare success.
To be honest I can’t decide whether I feel sad or hopeful today. Is it possible to feel both? I seem to have rediscovered the feeling that I’ll never really know how I feel – which means at worst I can be okay without ever really understanding why, or how I’m okay. Still – okay is okay and I guess I’ll have to take that.
Anyway all of that aside- I wondered if you might do me a little favour and head over to Youtube and ‘like’ this video:
I’ll love you forever if you do……
I leave you tonight with one of my all time favourite songs. It’s a lovely song. You should have a little listen:
So – I had a small wobbly moment yesterday but I’m alright again now. What can I say? Normal service has been resumed…..
When I woke up this morning I decided that I was going to spend the day a) by myself, b) in my own head and c) doing stuff I wanted to do. Here’s what I achieved:
I don’t know if its all better now or not. But I’m not too worried about it anymore because what will be will be.
The title of this post is a fairly adequate description of how I’ve been feeling for the last week or so. It’s also the title of an awesome song by one of my favourite bands – here it is if you fancy a listen:
Cool, eh?
I returned to work after SEVENTEEN whole days off today. The break was all great and awesome and stuff, but I started to feel a bit out of sorts and pointless because I was missing my routine and everybody knows how WeeGee loves a routine*
To be fair, it isn’t really me who needs the routine, it’s my broken brain** because in the absence of routine broken brain takes against me and does everything in its power to mix it all up again in the off chance that it might manage to convince me that things are so mixed up that jumping out the window is the BEST IDEA IN THE WORLD.
The upshot of all of this is that I had two days where I was a teeny tiny bit ‘woe is me’ which made me panic because I didn’t think I could do the whole ‘woe is me’ thing again but then I decided I was being foolish because there is a big difference between ‘woe is me’ and being a little bit down in the dumps because a) Christmas is all over with, b) you’ve been sitting around not doing much for a few days and c) you’re missing your friends from work. And then everything was okay again.
To be honest I think one of the most difficult things about getting better is adjusting to the ups and downs that a normal mood throws at you. Every time I feel a little bit sad, or a little bit confused, or a little bit lost (or a little bit whatever else) I over react because I think ‘here we go again’ when what I should really think is ‘how novel to have a fluctuating mood instead of the pointless empty one I used to have one hundred percent of the time’. I suppose I’ll get used to it in time…..
Food wise, I’m still doing well. In fact I’m doing really well. Christmas dinner didn’t fill me with the dread or self loathing or panic of previous years. In fact the only thing Christmas dinner filled me with this year was turkey and stuffing and brussel sprouts and other such festive foodstuffs. Better than that, I recently managed to EAT OUT IN PUBLIC WITH PEOPLE I HAD NEVER MET BEFORE. Get this – I didn’t just manage it once…. I only went and did it twice. Go me 🙂
As far as weight goes I think I’m getting somewhere. I’m fairly confident that my weight has levelled out at last and I can now go into almost any shop I want and find something that fits me (which is to say I’m normal enough to wear normal sizes which is pretty exciting, when you come to think about it) Every so often I wobble*** but only in a very minor manner and given some of the wobbles I’ve overcome so far I’m not going to worry myself about the minor things in life.
I suppose I could have summed up all of the above by saying ‘on a scale of one to mental I’m not very mental at all’ but I felt like setting it all out in black and white to remind myself how well I’m doing and how far I’ve come. I know that some of my readers are having a hard time with themselves at the moment, and I also know that they probably don’t think that it’ll ever get any better. The thing is, you have to keep on doing the right things, even when the right things don’t seem to be helping because eventually it will slot into place and the right things will lead you out the other side. To borrow a phrase from a much esteemed fellow blogger…… There is hope.
Meanwhile in other news I didn’t mention that I officially LOVE being back at work not least because I can blog in my (late) lunch hour. Nothing else to report today save that Mr Hilarious accidentally bought his daughter a psychotic hamster for her birthday and has some very impressive scars to prove it.
Cheerio for now
Lots of love from WeeGee xoxoxox
*Just in case you don’t, WeeGee loves a routine very much
**Yes – I do think of us as two separate entities. You’re allowed to do things like that when you’re mental
***Like when a pair of size six trousers are a bit tight for me. Which is ridiculous and I know it.
It’s a bit late for me to be blogging but I can’t sleep – I’m still off work so I slept ’til midday and then I had a small snooze in the afternoon. Now I am chronically awake and wondering what to do with myself….. Blogging seems as good a thing as any!
Well. What to say? I suppose I should start by pointing out that I missed you all. I knew I’d got a bit attached to my blogging buddies but that small gap proved to me that absence really does make the heart grow fonder.
The next thing to say is that WeeGee is officially not depressed anymore and that WeeGee loves not being depressed anymore. There are still a lot of things to take care of, I know that, but its so much easier to deal with stuff when you don’t wish you were dead.
The final thing to say today is that I’m looking forward. I’m looking forward to tomorrow, and this month, and this year and to my life.
I can’t wait to see what happens. Being alive is a tough gig. But it’s absolutely worth it in the end.
Hello there everybody! Just a very quick festive hello to my blogging buddies. Hope you are all enjoying your day and that things are going well. I am aware that I owe you one very big update and I promise I’ll get to that before the end of the year.
In the meantime all is calm in WeeGee land. I’m still doing really well with all the mental stuff and things in my life continue to be good. Mr Magic is still AWESOME and Christmas has been fab.
I’ll leave you with my favourite festive song. Well – it’s ages since we had a bit of Frank…..
I’ve spent the last few days wandering around with a huge black cloud hanging over my head. I was trying to ignore it because it felt too familiar and if I knew only one thing it was that I wasn’t ready to step back into the darkness just yet. And then today I realised that I wasn’t heading back to the doomy gloomies at all….. I was just experiencing a NORMAL fluctuation in mood.
You know what it’s like when you’re mental – if the worse thing in the world were to happen you’d feel exactly the same way as you did before it happened because clinical depression feels like the worst thing in the world is happening to you over and over again and you have no hope of making it stop. I thought that was where I was going for a while there. I kept feeling overwhelmed and pointless and bleak and, above all else, I felt myself sinking. I guess a lot of my readers know that sinking feeling?
I’d just got to the point of thinking ‘why now?’ and ‘why me?’ I was angry with my broken brain because I thought we’d done a fricking deal…. And then I worked out what was going on: HORMONES. And I’m as happy as happy can be now…..
I know girls are supposed to be a bit pissed off about being hormonal and stuff but here’s the thing – I’ve been depressed for my whole adult life and this is THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE EVER that my mood has had something to do with something other than a chemical imbalance in my brain. This, I think, is what normal feels like.
I think I’m supposed to eat chocolate and cry and stuff right about now but I won’t. Do you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to enjoy it, because this is NORMAL BEHAVIOUR – and if that makes you think I’m MENTAL you’d be 100 percent correct.
Here’s a little song that sums me up today (but I’ll be fine tomorrow)
This isn’t the first time that I’ve started a blog entry by saying ‘I don’t know where to start’ but today it’s different because the only problem I have is deciding which AWESOME thing to tell you about first*
I think I’ll start with two apologies because I definitely owe them:
Apology number one: I’m sorry that I’ve been a bit irregular about blogging this week
Apology number two: I’m sorry that I forgot about The Depressed Moose’s birthday and therefore didn’t make a fuss of him on the day
Then I’ll do a bit of a thank you:
A great big thank you to my bestest blogging buddies** who noted my absence and got in touch to make sure I was okay*** Love you guys gazillions xoxoxox
Now all that’s out of the way I suppose it’s time for a little bit of an update from WeeGee land….
Ages ago, when I was all woe is me and I want to die I heard somebody**** saying ‘when things in your life are good, good things happen’ I remember it because it made me feel even more bleak than I already did because things in my life were bad and it felt like they would never get any better and it just hammered home that ‘what’s the effing point’ feeling that creeps in so regularly when you’re mental.
But somehow (and very slowly) things started to get better. They got so much better that eventually I had my ‘holy swearword moment’ and realised what the effing point was. And from that moment on things in my life have been good and getting better all the time. As I write this I can say genuinely that I am happy, that I’m enjoying life and that I can’t wait to find out what comes next. I’ve always liked adventures – it’s just that I’ve usually been too scared to go on them. Not anymore.
Meanwhile in other news I would like to make it known that there is ABSOLUTELY no way to get in or out of a Porsche wearing a skirt with any dignity whatsoever. Nothing else to report save that Gryff is getting a bit fed up with all this WeeGee having a social life stuff so a night in with the cat is very definitely in order.
I leave you today with an AWESOME (if a little old) song which sums up my life quite neatly at the moment:
Lots and lots and lots of love and a few hugs for good measure, WeeGee xoxoxoxo
PS – I promise to catch up on your lovely blogs this week. I’ve been missing you all
*I’ve had my fair share of problems and this is officially my favourite problem of all time
**You know who you are
***I wondered if you thought I was a) heartbroken because it had all gone tits up or b) murdered because Mr Magic turned out to be a serial killer…..
Before I go any further I HAVE to share this song with you because it is GORGEOUS and it’s also the best cover version in the whole world EVER:
BRILLIANT in’t it?
Sorry I didn’t post yesterday. It was Mrs Mountain day and I had an awful lot of thinking to do. Plus I had my (now daily) chit chat with Mr Magic to fit in which was sweet and awesome and a nice way to spend my evening. Mrs Mountain and I spent a lot of time talking about why I had pressed the self-sabotage button and gone a bit weird about food. There wasn’t really a conclusion but the most plausible theory was that I was happy and generally enjoying things but broken brain had decided that I didn’t deserve any of that on account of me being all rubbish and pointless and what not. By the way, project fatten up WeeGee is coming along okay but it’s really hard work and every so often I feel like bursting into tears. I’m ploughing on through it, and I’ve made plans to eat with people for every meal over the weekend because it’s difficult to be weird about eating when you’re eating with people. The only other thing to note is that if I see another sachet of complan in my life I swear to god I’m going to SCREAM.
I’ve been compiling a little list of all the awesome things about Mr Magic and it’s getting quite long now so I thought I would share it:
He is a magician*
He swears more than I do**
He phones me every night just to say hi***
He phoned me first thing this morning just to say hi****
He says brolly instead of umbrella*****
He just comes right out and says what he thinks******
He is best friends with the guitarist from the Real People*******
He understands that WeeGee is vulnerable and a) knows when to back off, b) knows when not to back of and c) has already realised that if you want to bring WeeGee back to herself when she’s having a moment you just have to tell her the truth and then make her laugh********
As for all the awesome things about Mr Grammar Geek? I won’t do a list because I can sum it up in one word: intrigue. He’s interested in all kinds of things I’m not interested in (yet) and that’s very interesting to WeeGee. I also have a sneaking suspicion that he’s hiding in a little bit of a shell and that is also interesting. Oh – and he plays the trumpet. Actually I forgot the best bit: he’s French and I’m pretty confident that he’d sound pretty damn sexy reading my shopping list out loud. Sigh….
What next….. How about a little musical interlude?
That there is the other contender for the best cover version in the whole world EVER. Listen to it all the way through and you’ll think you’re going die of awesomeness when you hear how Frank’s voice cracks with bitterness and spite at the end. I love Frank Turner so much that I’d definitely marry him if he asked even though I don’t really understand why people get married.
Work has been brilliant this week – I’ve been reminded that not only do I love my job I also love the people I work with and I know that means I am a very lucky girl indeed. Here are some of the brilliant things that have happened in the office this week:
I learned that those things surveyors survey stuff with are called ‘theodolites’ which means that I’ll be able to show off and say ‘that’s a theodolite’ the next time I see one
Mrs Bossy told the story of the time a mini tornando went down her street and a child’s sandpit landed in her garden and WeeGee thought if that was my story it would be the first thing I would tell people when I met them
Mrs Bossy told the story of the time her back went when she was naked in the kitchen and WeeGee thought a) if that was my story it would be the last thing I would tell people and b) that she must remember never to go into her kitchen naked again ;-P
Mr Hilarious kept going on about how huge the chocolate cake in the café was so WeeGee went down to see it and when the guy asked her what she would like she was forced to say ‘Nothing, I just came to look at the cake’ and felt like a bit of a chump
WeeGee accidently wrote ‘lots of love’ in a retirement card which disappointed her because it took the edge off some excellent sarcasm
WeeGee accidentally said ‘thanks for that lovely’ at the end of a telephone call with Mr I’m Quite Handsome and everyone in the office teased her so much she actually blushed
WeeGee didn’t tell the rest of the office that Mr I’m Quite Handsome replied ‘No worries sweetheart….. my pleasure’ because she wanted to keep that bit to herself
Today has been one of my favourite Fridays in the world EVER because Project Rubbish is now signed off and officially off my desk and if things start falling over it’ll be nothing to do with me. This made me happy and bouncy and hilarious which was cool but then it rubbed on everyone else and it all got a bit hysterical and WeeGee had to leave the room to compose herself. I’ve reached that point in the day where I’ve written my to do list for next week and don’t want to start anything new but it’s too early to respectfully leave so I’m blogging and gossiping with you instead of gossiping with Mr Hilarious. Speaking of Mr Hilarious – here’s another reason he’s AWESOME: when WeeGee’s purse breaks and she has an emergency super glue required moment he has some emergency super glue at the bottom of one of his drawers.
Meanwhile in other news I am going to the pub after work and intend to eat, drink and be merry. Nothing else to report today save is it nearly wine o’clock yet?
*You don’t have to know very much about WeeGee to understand why that impresses her
**In a comedy fashion – he’s not at all uncouth
***And this doesn’t make me feel at all crowded or overwhelmed which is a good sign
****Because he ‘wanted to wake up with me’ and instead of being a bit creepy it was incredibly sweet
*****My friends laugh at me when I say brolly because it ‘makes me sound like an old person’
******My favourite kind of person because people like that tend not to tell lies
*******I’m guessing I’m one of only a small number of people who will find this impressive
********I don’t actually have an aside for this one but I had to keep up the pattern and I’ve now officially smashed my own blogging asterisk world record
Here’s a warning for you…. You don’t have to listen to The Gaslight Anthem for very long before you find yourself accidentally listening to Bruce Springsteen wondering when you got old enough to listen to Bruce Springsteen. Here’s The Boss singing a song which is even more gorgeous when he sings it even if Patti Smith is one of the coolest people on the planet:
I am pleased to report that I’m over my wobble and I’m not feeling sad anymore – told you the ship would steady itself! I’ve admitted defeat with the whole food thing and went to my GP* to get a referral to a nutritionist because I might not be able to do this by myself and it’s very important that I manage to do it. Mr Wise reminded me that the last time I started getting over a serious case of the flat and empties I went a bit weird about food which is useful to know because if you know the patterns you can head them off at the pass. I’ve lost a considerable amount of weight in a not very considerable amount of time and I’ve dipped back into red on the chart** so there’s a lot of work to be done. But it’s okay, because I’m going to do the work and I’ve promised that I’ll get myself to the supermarket after work to do a hilarious ‘I can eat all this stuff without getting fat’ shop which is an excellent start even if I do say so myself. Pass the peanut butter….
It’s been a while since I did an online dating update, mainly because I’ve been doing some thinking and making a few little promises to myself about attachments and boundaries and now I’ve figured all that stuff out I’m all happy and excited about the whole idea again. I’m currently in touch with two interesting guys – Mr Magic and Mr Grammar Geek. Mr Magic is a magician*** who is a) very kind, b) very wise and c) not very likely to be afraid to argue with WeeGee. Mr Grammar Geek is an academic who a) is absolutely on the same page as WeeGee when it comes to intelligence, b) can out geek WeeGee on the grammar front**** and c) talks a very good cup of tea. There was a Mr Cheeky but he got a bit spooked when he realised I was mental***** and there’s a Mr Brevity who is definitely not very brief and is almost certainly interesting if perhaps a little intense so the jury is still out. Anyway – I’m going on a date with Mr Magic on Sunday which will be good fun and I’m fairly confident that I won’t come over all shy in the company of someone I can speak to on the phone for TWO hours without even thinking about it. I’m also going to meet up with Mr Grammar Geek next week and I just know that we are going to have a perfect cup of tea because neither of us would have it any other way and if it all goes horribly wrong there’s always the split infinitive to fall back on.
Here are a few more of those WeeGee observations from Match.Com
If you tell WeeGee your favourite film is Last Tango in Paris and she ignores you there’s no point repeating the fact because WeeGee isn’t an idiot and is ignoring you on purpose
If the only photo you have of yourself looks like it was taken when you were talking to your lawyer on the phone through a wire grill WeeGee will conclude that it probably was and give you a wide berth
80’s music is cool and everything but if it’s the ONLY thing you listen to you aren’t really a music lover are you?
Meanwhile in other news it is officially winter because WeeGee has had to dig out the winter wardrobe. Nothing else to report today save that I said something unpleasant to The Man Who Knows under my breath but didn’t say it quietly enough and found myself on the back foot trying to think of something that rhymed with f**k……
Loadsa love from WeeGee xxxxx
*I didn’t ever manage two visits in one week when I was PROPER mental
**But only just
***I’ve asked – he can’t magic us all better
****To be fair, I reckon he could out geek me on almost everything apart from maybe Monk
*****Which is fair enough, because it’s not for everyone is it?
How do you eat an elephant? 