Tearing my hair out!!

My computer is behaving very badly & thus it's got to go to the doctor for a few days which is infuriating as I was planning to share some photos of my bead trays & assorted tins of titivating titbits with you this week. That would have meant looking at ravishing work by such art bead luminaries as Emma Ralph, Laura Sparling, Beverley Hicklin, Melanie Moertel, Sally Carver, Helen Brodt-Savage, Heather Powers, Melanie Brooks and many more.

I also have a rather tasty bracelet to photograph which features beads by Emma Ralph & Clare Scott, together with that Saucy pendant I've been talking about. But alas, my plans are blighted.

There's no doubt about it - this is a bad hair day!! I hope to see you very, very soon!!

By the way, if you're ever looking for a tin to store your semi-precious stones or silver findings in, why not pay Emma Bridgewater a visit? There are things in her shop which, in my humble opinion, are irresistible!

A strange state of mind

I had to take the past few days out which makes me feel SO angry with myself; I loathe being at the mercy of emotions. And once again I'm fearful that my brain & body are beginning to over-ride me. Imagine having a dictatorial stranger in your house & that you are completely at their mercy. This is bipolar. I am not my bipolar, but my bipolar is me.

From Sunday morning to midnight yesterday, I managed a total of five hours sleep so I've been feeling very disorientated & restless during the past few days. Last night, my brain finally submitted and allowed me to sleep so I feel better today.

Now that a quieter place has opened up, I'm going to see if I can't paint it out. I think the trick is not to analyse it but to gently acknowlege it & see if it will work through. And I shall also count my blessings, for I am fortunate & have many.

Namaste!

Ms Dangerfield is absent because...

1. Her brain is full of unwieldy thoughts.

2. Space monkeys sing jingles to her in the middle of the night.

3. She has decided to set herself free.

4. Her metaphysical house has blown down & she needs to reassemble it twig by twig.

No, I haven't lost the plot. I'm simply trying to learn how to live in a new way & part of this involves training myself to avoid being sidetracked by distractions.

Possibly this is something that many of us need to think about from time to time - what to do when our lives become simply too full of 'stuff'.

This stick person has peeled herself back to the bare bones as she is in need of restoration. It's a bit chilly at the moment :-)

The Bad Hair Day Code

I'm trying to climb back from a bipolar slump. I don't like to bore people with tales of what life is like if you're a bipolar babe - thankfully when one has spiralled down to the point of no return, one is usually too incapacitated to do anything other than pull the bedclothes ever tighter over one's head, so one couldn't write anything anyway! Sighs of relief all round :-) One can't keep people out of the loop completely though - my family & friends do need some explanation as to why I occasionally disappear from view.

We all develop different strategies of dealing with bipolar swings & mine are particularly irritating because I push people who are close to me away by being flippant & by denying that there's anything wrong. The crash comes & members of my close circle say gently that they did try to warn me - unfortunately I either didn't hear or I wasn't listening.

I'm also a difficult patient because I argue, joke & make light of things - I do my best to switch the focus away from me. I think I do this because I don't perceive myself as being a person - I am merely a thing with a series of human roles: wife, mother, daughter, listener, advocate, etc. Whatever was me was destroyed a long time ago. Please, please don't feel sorry for me - I only mention this for the purposes of illustration. I've never asked any fellow bipolar babe if they feel divorced from life in this way - it wouldn't surprise me if some of us feel that we can only participate in life from the sidelines. That's just the way it is for some of us.

Usually I refer to my bouts of depression as 'blips' & those that include suicide attempts as 'slumps'. I'm being dragged out of a slump this time & I'm fortunate that I'm being monitored via a daily visit from the wonderful health care team who are looking after me at present. Inspired by the hood-proof hair gel, I've now been allowed to add a new term to the monitoring lexicon - 'a bad hair day'. This covers days when one's concentration goes into hiding; when even the smallest things seem mountainous. The positive aspect is that one is at least trying to do something helpful because:

Razors pain you;

Rivers are damp;

Acids stain you;

And drugs cause cramp.

Guns aren’t lawful;

Nooses give;

Gas smells awful;

You might as well live.

Dorothy Parker

Sometimes it's essential to be frivolous. Being frivolous is not necessarily frivolous :-)

A hair gel that's hood proof??

I've just watched an advert for hair gel that promised it was hood proof. This sends shivers down my spine - surely the hair will mould the hood?

So it's not enough that I have to wade through a swamp of discarded clothes whenever I venture into Tom's room on a plate/bowl/mug hunt. I may now have to clamber over a series of distorted head shapes too? This is either a vision from a nightmare or a future entry for the Turner Prize!