Bed

I love my bed.  I own two duvet sets, which I get to wash with some regularity.  They were the nearest I could find to "Indian chic" that I could find that weren't from John Lewis (too expensive).  In fact, they were the cheapest I could find but they went with the colour scheme of my bedroom - reds, purples and a dull, springy beige carpet.  They both frayed within 2 months of owning them, maybe due to washing them at too high a temperature, but I always thought bedding should be washed hot to get rid of crud.  To go with the duvet set, I've many cushions and pillows in jewel colours and Moroccan sequins and small bits of mirrors (not mirrors as such, but I don't know what they are called).  Finally, on top of the duvet I fling two blankets and a long narrow thingy which doesn't serve any purpose other than to make bed-making a chore.  This is a long paragraph.

It takes me 7 minutes to make the bed every morning, usually once the children are at school.  I have to make the bed, I cannot, repeat cannot, leave it unmade.  So, this won't come as a surpise, but after one particularly busy day I had no time to make it until the evening - half an hour to be precise, before getting into it.  That is a quirk and I recognise it as such, but it's so satisfying getting into a bed that will be wrecked in no time;  and seeing as I'm a "tosser and turner" the entire bedding is on the floor by the time I wake up.  Semi colon in the right place?

I don't take anything to bed other than my boyfriend's t-shirt, when he's not wearing it of course.  I clutch it to my nose, inhale a musty fragrance.  The next day it goes in the wash to eliminate the musty odour.

I used to suffer from insomnia, sometimes I'd take about 3 hours and a lot of punching the pillow to get to sleep.  Not so in this bed.  I fall asleep immediately and don't wake until the alarm clock goes off with the sensation of a full bladder.  My bed is my bedfellow, the fourth love of my life.

Crappy and Crabby

This is not the "good life" my blog title suggests it is, nor has it ever been. I'm currently crying my eyes out, despite the happy pills I'm on, trying to make sense of all the crap that is currently surrounding me or drowning me in a 17th century cesspit. This is going to be an introduction to a new blog that I will be creating at some point in the future, with a better design, layout and title, but being impatient, I thought I'd fill you in on some of the details. The new blog (when I get round to it) will be a chronological account of shit hitting the fan... yum, can't wait for that one. Anyway, back to the tears. It has already been established by certain quarters (read "twats") that my son's global developmental delays are down to my bipolar status. First of all, I must quibble with the term "global developmental delays" or GDD. This is a term reserved for toddlers who haven't reached certain milestones by a certain age, for example, sitting or rolling over. My son is 6, not a toddler. As I remember he reached these milestones and others within an appropriate time frame. I've also heard that after the age of 4 or 5, it is no longer considered appropriate to use this term because after that it is mental retardation. Not very pc, let's call it thick instead. Mind you, that's in the States. Here it is "learning disabilities". Good, that's cleared up then: my son is learning disabled and the possible cause is a) bipolar mum and b) divorced. Actually, make that "that is the cause and we don't need to bother now". My son doesn't have a diagnosis because of this inference and he has autistic traits because he's thick.... great! Errrr... what about, autistic with learning disabilities? Has anyone thought it might be that way round? Autistic with learning disabilities because he was born that way? Remember, learning disabilities isn't actually a diagnosis because it's a SYMPTOM and not a cause. It's often a sign of something underlying it: neurological damage, Down's Syndrome, autism, blindness, not enough oxygen at birth and so on. I'm not saying it's autism, but I'm not ruling it out entirely as he seems to tick most of the boxes. But I'm wondering, if I'd never mentioned the bipolar business that people would have looked more closely at my son's issues? There is also a genetic or familiar connection between bipolar and autism where there is no connection between learning disabilities and bipolar - google it. I'm currently looking at a multi-disciplinary team diagnosis for my son - they can diagnose anything they want and I'll be happy. I do want a label. I want to know WHO my son is and how he sees the world.

Confused

Hello all. It's been a while since I last blogged. Had to wait until I was stabilised moodwise on lamictal which is a drug used to treat epilepsy and bipolar disorder, of which I have the latter. The medication is working well and I am at a "therapeutic level". However, as I always find ways to moan about things, even good things, lamictal does have side effects.

OCD and anxiety are one of them (I lump them together as they are related, or related in my case). I must admit, I had OCD and a touch of anxiety before I started on this drug, but now both conditions are 10 times worse. The other night I was researching fire hazards in the home and what to do in the event of a fire. I looked around in dismay at the sole fire alarm in the flat I share with my two young children. I'd read that you should have one in every room, plus a fire blanket, an extinguisher and a portable ladder. Something at the back of my mind was telling me that this was a tad OTT, nonetheless this information got me worrying. Before I put my daughter to bed, I sat down with her and went through a fire drill with her. She looked bored and then concerned. This was at 10pm at night, not the most pleasant thing to send a child off to sleep sweetly. I then unplugged every socket in the house. I know this is quite morbid but this is an illustration of how my mind is working at the moment. I have also developed a penchant for cleaning everything stationary in the house, every day. I have cleaned doors, skirting boards, walls, furniture. I have vacuumed floors and ceilings. I have been applying with relish stain removers to the point where if I spot a stain I get excited.

The other thing that's causing problems with this medication is short term memory loss. I have many times recently, stood in the hallway wondering why I was standing in the hallway. I put things down in places I wouldn't normally put them down, thus making anything difficult to find. I am constantly fishing for the right word and wondering how to spell fairly simple words. At least I never forget to drink a whisky and coke or is that 5 whisky and cokes? I can never remember.

As with all medicine, there will be side effects but, in my case, it's a toss up between lousy depression and time wasting hypomania and/or being fairly happy and functioning. I'm just glad I found something I'm suited to. Okay, that is all as this laptop of mine is about to crash.

A Trip to Hypomania World

Hello, nice to be back. After the last bout of blogging I fell into a depression and then zoomed into mania - where I still am at the moment. I know some people don't like hearing about bipolar disorder (dunno why), but I can't talk about my life or myself without mentioning it really. Wherever I go, it goes.

As some of you know I dumped my boyfriend. I don't want to go into details but I was in the grip of hypomania at the time. I also put off getting my medication as I no longer believed I was bipolar. I also started believing I had special powers again. Special powers of ruining other people's lives more like. This is going to be a rambled and randomly put together blog as I have racing thoughts at the moment - fun, my mind is constantly busy.

A trip to the supermarket had me thinking about Gok Wan to being killed by being sucked into one of those street cleaning vehicles. These associative thoughts (don't know what that means, but kind of like it, maybe I just made it up) make me very forgetful about what's important or what needs doing, so frequently I come home without the milk but with a few passion fruit, lock myself out of the house, forget my own name at times. A bit scary.

Hypomania/mania can be fun but I get lucid moments when I know that listening to Visage's Fade to Grey and googling jalapenos all day long isn't actually getting my life moving in the direction I want it to go. Basically, for all those of you who ever took drugs, it's like speeding and being stoned at the same time. My bum is glued to the chair continuously facebooking and googling anything that pops into my mind. I sometimes even think I can change the world by these pointless activities.

I sometimes use this energy to get the housework started (I can't say "done" because it never gets done), but will clean tiles - maybe 5 of them before moving onto cutting threads off bath rugs, that sort of thing. My children don't seem to mind my manic moments apart from when I embarrass my eldest in the playground by yelling at people to move out the way. However, I'm not exactly euphoric at this moment in time, more speeded up and irritable, so I like to keep out of people's way - I tend to get the attitude that they're doing things all wrong and too slowly anyway. Like walking, why is everyone walking ridiculously slowly? Why are people pondering groceries and slowly putting them in their shopping trolleys - I don't understand it.

I can't concentrate on anything at the moment which makes form filling and bill paying a bit of a nightmare, I just can't focus and find these activities hugely boring. This has got worse in the last 3 or 4 years, when before I was super organised, must be due to the bipolar getting worse with age and unmedicated for so long, it may be connected to the perimenopause, which I am also experiencing (sweat like a teenage boy, smell like a teenage boy). I was only diagnosed at the beginning of this year, but it didn't come as a huge shock and explained why I have lived the life I have lived.

Anyway, that's about it really. I'm back with my boyfriend who is now caring for me and coping with me. I need that kind of support at the moment without the drugs having kicked in yet. Hopefully will be posting again soon. Bye.

My 3 Little Obsessions

Obsession No 1: JAPANESE BENTO I had my first bento box meal in Wardour Street or nearby. What I love about bento is that it reminds me of the compartmentalised meals you get on flights, you know, the little bread roll in one area and the Russian Salad in another - no food touching here, like baked beans completely ruining fish fingers or tomato sauce bloodying the mash. Of course, the quality of bento is better and a little bit more exotic, the odd tempura, squidgy rice with a sour plum and a delicate salad of sock tasting daikon. You see, it's not the flavours so much that appeals but the look - they can look like little treasure boxes. Children's bento are even more artful, but are less sophisticated and more cartoonish in appearance with little bears made out of rice balls or hard boiled eggs moulded into stars. I like to experiment with bento for my children because 10 times out of 10 they will eat it. Bung the same ingredients in undecorative fashion, the children won't touch it. I often make bento style on a plate for my children as in the picture.

Obsession No 2: FORUMS There seems to be a forum for everything these days: From daffodil growers to sufferers of beaver fever from night soil men to wellington boot wearers. I'm not on any of these, but I do patronise many, most of which I have now forgotten the usernames and passwords to. I'm on a fair few bipolar forums, the threads of which go like this: I'm down - see your pdoc (psychiatrist) - okay I'll see my pdoc (psychiatrist) - good. They are rather self-limiting but they are fun in an self-absorbed kind of way. I used to ask and answer questions on Yahoo Answers long before I joined twitter and facebook. My questions/answers started off innocently enough: how long do you cook brisket for? How can I shave my armpits with this annoying skin tag? After a while my questions descended into juvenile Monty Pythonesque nonsense like "Where can I buy dust?" and "How much does limescale weigh?" It was a good prelude to tweeting, as I still pose those questions today.

My Final Obsession No 3: COMEDY Not just any old comedy, my comedy. Writing one-liners which I hoped to perform, which never really came to fruition, but that's another story. I like writing off the wall one-liners with joke set ups that often set one on a complicated, round-a-bout journey to figure out the punchline. It's just how my mind works, the jokes shouldn't work, but they sometimes do. One of my jokes is: My husband keeps sprinkling 100s & 1000s (sprinkles) on the chimp's arse - I don't know who to call, the animal protection sanctuary or Dunkin' Donuts?. I won't put any of my other jokes here as they are precious and don't want them stolen. I've got notebook upon notebook of one-liners, some written while sober, many still written while drunk. Once I write a joke or a sketch or a piece to perform (which I did ONCE), I never look at the material again - it's too cringingly painful.

So those are my ongoing obsessions - I hope they don't change.

A Twitter Story

Life can be dull. People can be dull. Shopping in M&S can be dull. So, to make life more exciting I like to create/make up people, bring them to life. I should write a novel, but I have no staying power and no focus, I go off characters pretty quickly in order to create new ones - I get bored with fiction as well as events in real life. My creative outlet was and still is twitter. It was going to be facebook too, until my boyfriend kindly mentioned that facebook was more for networking and showing your holiday snaps to friends. Damn - how tedious! Well, at least I've got twitter and what's surprising, is that I seem to have some loyal fans, errr like 10 people.

Each tweet, as you know, is only 140 characters which makes for short sentences. About that previous sentence's length in fact. Well, I wrote a whole spoof of the movie Alien from start to finish on twitter one day. And people followed it and read it. Tweet after tweet of aliens bursting out of stomachs, faces being covered by embryonic aliens and so on. My fellow tweeters kept with me and gave me positive feedback.

I'd like to tell you about some of my fictional characters. The newest is professor Frederick Chihuahua of the University of Barking, who claims to have invented the letter B. His girlfriend Donna Kerr-Babb, formerly of Bromley, is now working in an Abu Dhabi brothel. Why? We have yet to discover, but I'm sure it will be juicy. My other character creations have been Sonja Vielschmuck an Amazonian German (kind of based on 5 ft 2 me) who was in love with Drew Seed of the Flannelet Subway. My most annoying personage was not actually a person, but an alien called Botztxip. I had to stop tweeting as Botztxip when people complained they couldn't understand it/him/she. Well, it/he/she is an alien, aren't they? Not all my characters on twitter have been fictional, I've used Samuel Pepys, Nell Gwynn, Ceaucescu's Puppy and Lassie to tweet on numerous occasions. I've also brought into twitter inventions - the 4th dimensional pencil case, the nipple slippers and nostril boots.

None of this is particularly interesting, especially if you've never seen my tweets, but it does show you that twitter is a tool for however you want to use it. If you want to catch up with friends, talk tech, or follow trending topics that's great. But I like to use it to outline and colour in people who could actually be real in a crazy, topsy-turvey world all possible thanks to the medium of twitter.

This is not a Bipolar Blog

This is not a bipolar blog, I promise! I just thought I'd give everybody an update on how I'm doing. Well, it has been two days since I decided to quit taking my bipolar medication without consulting the psychiatrist. I did this for 3 reasons: 1) I couldn't and still can't get hold of him or anyone else who can help, 2) the side effects of the drug and 3) I was on a mild dose so figured complete withdrawal rather than weaning would not make me ill. So far on point no. 3 I have not been experiencing any adverse effects from discontinuation. Unfortunately, the side effects of the drug remain and may do so for a few weeks or even forever, just part and parcel of requiring medication, eh?

The side effects seem to accrue each day, today, I can add mad staring eyes to the list. Who remembers staring competitions at school? Well, I was always rubbish at them and why was it brown eyed people would win over blue eyed? Now, I can beat anyone - I just don't blink, that often. I'll have to watch out for dry eyes. My tongue is still doing a mad dance in my mouth, just fortunate it hasn't decided to go out for some air yet. Most of the time, I'm not aware of it. I've grown accustomed to my tongue and have given it the name "Bobby". The other side effect which falls under the umbrella of tardive dyskinesia (involuntary movements) is my face pulls into a sneer every so often. I can kind of counteract this by pulling an equally stupid face when I feel the sneer coming on, or just simply hide the sneer with my scarf or hand. Strange though, when I feel it about to come on and ask my boyfriend to look at it, it doesn't happen - we've all that haven't we when we've wanted to show a loved one a nervous tic?

Tardive dyskinesia is relatively rare, and usually doesn't happen until someone has been on an anti-psychotic for years - please don't be put off by the term anti-psychotic, they are used in the treatment of even mild bipolar and even autism and have been used quite successfully, as have anti-convulsants too, doesn't mean you're convulsing. TD for short is rare as is death, diabetes and diarrhoea which I just read on the list of NHS side effects for this drug. Sounds rosy, doesn't it?

The side effect I have that drives me up the wall or wants me to is akathisia - restlessness. You virtually can't sit still or stand still. I can sit still if I have music blaring, fingers maniacally typing, feet tapping - but take one of these props away and I just want to run. Reading or watching tv is impossible, so in company I'm not very good at the moment.

Well, that's how it is at the moment. Waiting for my psychiatrist to call so that I can be put on different medication and perhaps be prescribed something for the td and akathisia as well. Grateful for any comments or questions you may have on this post.