enlightenment and alien flowers

Because I haven't posted a photograph in a while, here's one I took this morning...

Does anyone else think these look like alien flowers?

I have been reading a book that can best be described as "enlightening"... it has brought into focus all the different things that life and others have been trying to teach me. I get it now. I guess I just needed it put to me in a certain way for the penny to drop. Some people are lucky; they get it without all the emotional fuss and tortuous questioning. They simply get it from what their lives have taught them. Some of us need a little help.
Here's hoping that now I have it, I don't lose it again...

For it's easy to be positive when things are running smoothly. The trick is in not allowing the speed bumps of life to throw us off course. Most of the time, life happens gradually - it's like that whole cooking a frog story ^[1]. You think everything is fine until one day you realise you're not happy, and that you have been slowly becoming unhappier over time. It doesn't just happen in an instant. Clawing your way back from this can take just as long as it took to get there in the first place.

So what is it that I'm yabbering on about today? Let's just say I hit a speed bump last night, although exactly what it was, I am unable to tell you (not because I don't want to but because I honestly have no idea why I reacted the way I did!)
I am pleased to report, though, that after a few hours of Terri-time today and a little bit of sunshine outside for a change, I am well on my way to regaining that Balance I've been cultivating of late ^[2].

~

^[1] I forget the details but it's something along the lines of you can't boil a frog by tossing it into hot water because it'll just jump out... instead you put him in cold water and slowly turn up the heat. Horrible metaphor, I know!

^[2] I have learned that if you say it enough then it becomes true. Cool trick.

The loop-de-loop

You know that feeling when your tummy does a flip-flop, like when you're passenger in a car and you're not paying attention and suddenly the car goes through a dip and it feels like your stomach got left behind? Well I feel like that's been happening to me, only it's not really my stomach but something less physical and more emotional, but in more or less the same place in my body. I'll be quite happily going along, doing my thing, living my day and all of a sudden I'll get one of these moments, where it feels like I'm on a roller-coaster and if I carry on going my emotions are going to dive, dive, dive submarine-style into the murky depths... at times like these my loved ones are my salvation. I will stop typing whatever command I'm busy with at my computer, pick up the phone and ring Hubby just to hear a voice and gather some sense of normalcy. Or I'll write a 2-line nonsensical email to my mom, or a friend, or a sister.
You see the last few months have been tough going, again. If I'm honest, I never really recovered 100% from my last extended period of depression - I had short stints of normalcy but I think it takes a long time to get past it completely and I feel like it's still so fresh in my mind that it doesn't take much to send me back there, and then it's such a hard fight to come back again. I'm back at the moment, for the most part. That is, I have a handle on things and am able to keep the niggling shadows at bay. Today I went to lunch with a large group of people from work and found myself sitting with two women I don't know except to nod hello at in passing, since we work in the same department. And I made it all the way through, making conversation and being a veritable social butterfly. I'm a tad exhausted now, but I feel a sense of accomplishment, although I'm not sure exactly when being sociable became such hard work.
I can't help but wonder will there ever be a time when being normal¹ will be the natural order of things again - or will I be fighting like this for the rest of my life..? I don't want to be on the rollercoaster anymore, I just want to live, and enjoy life. These pesky emotions are becoming a real pain in the ass, I tellya.
I suppose it's that time of year. 'Tis the season and all that - there's excitement in the buildup to the holidays but also sadness as we miss absent friends and family.
I mean, I know emotions are what make us human and all, but wouldn't it be nice if we could just take a break from them, occasionally?

~~~
~~
~

¹ Yeah, yeah, I know - It's a relative term..!

I'm Home

I'm home.
I have such a mish-mash of emotions raging inside at the moment that I don't know where to begin.

Friday was a disaster. Well, that's not entirely true - I got everything done at work that I was supposed to and left it all in readiness for my boss's return on Monday. By the end of the day, though, I was a wreck from working late on Thursday, in early Friday till late again and flatout all the way. I had to take an emergency break in the ladies' room at one point to avoid a tearful outburst from pure stress. The upcoming trip probably didn't help things as I like to have time to prepare for a journey; you know me - I have to have lists of things, and lists of lists of things in order to feel prepared. I had nothing; Cinderella and Hubby jumped in and took care of the household and shopping stuff and all I had to do was pack my suitcase.

I thought a good night's rest would see me feeling better on Saturday morning but the stress was still there. I was taught as a piano wire and my sense of humour was nowhere in sight. The check-in queue at Dublin airport was beyond ridiculous and even though we were there well in advance, we only just made the flight with no time even to stop for a spot of duty-free shopping. My family and friends in SA would just have to do without their Butlers Irish Chocolates this time.

I castigated a bloke in the queue who asked us to keep his place while he dashed to the loo because he left his bag behind in our care. In this day and age, with all the airport security, how stupid can some people be??! Cinderella and Hubby stayed well back and I pretended not to notice them laughing at me while the Irish all around looked mortified at my nerve in having a, er, quiet word with the guy when he got back. He's damn lucky I didn't get airport security to remove his bag and have it blown to bits just in case!

Two young lads who were jangling while we were waiting to board got the fright of their life when I barked at them for pushing each other until one of them stepped on my foot. They ran off to their parents then, who gave them a proper tongue lashing.

Is it wrong that I felt better for having growled at strangers? Because I tellya, it did help lower my stress levels.
A bit.

Then we flew to London's Heathrow airport... and the first thing we saw was a newsflash on a TV about the car bomb incident at Glasgow airport. 'Twas a good day to be flying, for sure. The already tight security was even tighter - we went through more security checks than I thought possible by the time we eventually boarded the flight to Johannesburg, which left late as a result. Hunger wasn't helping my mood any and then when I was finally seated in the middle seat in a cramped 'plane I felt I was going for meltdown. And I didn't understand why. And I was too tired to figure it out. So I spoke not a word, ate my dinner, watched a movie and spent the next 10 hours trying - rather unsuccessfully - to sleep.
The dude behind me who appeared to be on a mission to clean out the entire stock of Heineken on the flight did not help; the only person who thought he was amusing at 3am was himself and eventually the flight crew put him in their own quarters to sleep it off.

But after breakfast this morning I was feeling better... right up until it got light outside and we were on final approach to Johannesburg and I looked out the window and I saw the land of my birth, the area I spent my childhood in, in the days when my father was still alive and life was innocent. That was when it all came bubbling over and the pain in my heart would not be stilled and I started sobbing.
All the homesickness and missing my Mom and my family and friends that I have blocked off for so long emerged with a ferocity that took me by surprise, and it took some time for me to regain my composure.

Once it had had its say, my spirits started to lift a bit and the stress eased. I burst out laughing when I heard the first announcement over the PA while we were waiting, in that uniquely delightful flat Jo'burg accent, "Goood mawning laydeees and geentlemen..."
LOL! I was home.
The fact was hammered home by the chaos when we went to check in for the final leg of our journey to Port Elizabeth and the systems were down and the manual check-in process was being handled in the slowest and most disinterested manner possible... and all the passengers could do was make light of the situation and roll their eyes a lot.

The hour-and-a-half flight from Jo'burg to Port Elizabeth was passed in and out of consciousness (partly from only having had about 3 hours sleep in total at most, and partly from having taken a couple of good strong painkillers to deal with the headache brought on by lack of sleep). When I was conscious I struck up a conversation with the two chaps next to me who were both born and bred there, too. In fact one of them went to the same high school as me. Um, it's kind of a small town, hehe..! They were eager to catch me up on what had changed in my absence, and welcomed me home. PE is not called The Friendly City for nothing.

We landed in weather pretty much the same as what we had left behind in Dublin. The smell of salty sea air hit me as it always does when I stepped off the plane, and then there were my Mom and stepson and his mates, and Hubby's sister and her offspring all waiting with big hugs to greet us and it's been like the twilight zone ever since. Things have changed but it's still the same and I feel like I never left.
But I saw the Southern Cross star constellation for the first time tonight in two and a half years.
It's weird the things that you remember. The sounds and smells are the same and the view from my Mom's verandah hasn't changed at all.

I think I may be a bit jetlagged and the emotions are still running a little high, but it's not surprising, I guess.

Because I'm home again.

monday blues

I've been trying to write up a nice post for you guys, telling you all about the fun weekend Hubby and I had in London. It really was great - we stayed with my Li'l Sister and on Saturday the 3 of us went to watch the rugby-match-that-will-not-be-discussed and have a BBQ with my cousin at the pub he's been running for the last few years, followed by his farewell party.
He's moving to Oz, you see. We really had a good time (Thanks Cuz!) and it was well worth the hangover yesterday.

Trouble is it's hard to tell you good things about a great weekend when my mood is as irritable as what it is. Aaargh!!! Being nice - or even civil - to people is incredibly difficult when all I want to do is snap at them for simply breathing. Yep, it's one of those days when I should be sent home as unfit for human interaction.
Thing is, I should be happy... after all, this time next week we'll be on holiday in South Africa. And in truth, I am very excited and can barely contain myself about that. Who knew excitement and irritation could co-exist to such degrees?!

Because I don't wanna figure out why there is a problem with [process A]. I don't wanna have to solve the problem of poor performance on [server X]...

Update...
... and I've just noticed that some clever formatting I put in earlier caused only half my post to be published. I believe the GRRR factor has just grown exponentially!
d'ya think "I need to blog" is a valid excuse for not working any more today???!

Terri's Tantrum Technique

First, ensure that you have a very long, very boring day at work, peppered only with annoying little problems - you know, the kind that don't ever really go away, but sink to the bottom of your in-tray only to resurface months later to haunt you. This should be followed by a drive home in traffic piloted by mostly blind or stupid people. A beat-up Mitsubishi filled with bright-yellow-jacketed Lithuanian construction workers wolf-whistling at you when stopped at an intersection is optional.
When you finally get home, take a few minutes to map out a plan in your head of things you need to do in the remaining few hours before bedtime. Remember to leave little room for flexibility.
This next part is a vital: Ensure that you have at least one hour set aside to begin compiling a Very Long Document, one that you have been putting off until now due to lack of free time. At the moment when you decide to begin, change your mind and quickly put a load of laundry in the washing machine. Return to the table where said document is to be prepared and realise that in order to hang up the clean washing when it is ready, you will need to first clear the wash stand by folding the previous load. Once the clean laundry is folded you will need to take it upstairs in order to clear a space on the table so that you can start on The Document.
Return to the table, take your laptop out of its case, plug it in and switch it on.
Make another trip upstairs to retrieve some information required in the document.
Begin to read instructions on how to compose your document.
One and a half pages in, have a member of your family waft into the kitchen-cum-dining area where you are working and start chatting conversationally. Encourage them subliminally to leave by looking back to your computer screen at regular intervals while they are talking.
Resume work on the document. It will help to do the work using MS Word, with it's clever little "auto-formatting" feature that will ensure you end up with many tabs and bullet-points exactly where you don't want them.
Just when you think you're getting the hang of it, insert another member of you family into the mix, pointedly hanging around the stove area where supper is not yet cooking.
It should be mentioned here that a little bit of PMS couldn't hurt...
This should be about the time when your patience reaches its limit. Bang the keys of your keyboard to shut your laptop off and stomp into the kitchen. Open a cupboard to remove a pot. Realise that nobody has yet unpacked the dishwasher from the night before so begin that process yourself, delaying supper even further. You may find your family member has fled the scene. Remove the cutlery tray from the dishwasher and place it on the counter. Try and remove the teaspoons from those silly little compartments in the cutlery tray only to have the friggin' things get stuck.
Voila! The moment for your tantrum has arrived. Yank blindly at the teaspoons, forks and knives in a manner that sends them spinning all over the kitchen just at the moment when your other half walks into the kitchen asking, "Is everything OK?"

What you do next is up to you. Just remember, murder cases can be time consuming. Personally, I find it is a good idea to step outside and have a cigarette, leaving the offending cutlery and crockery in safer hands.

Note to self: I must remember to check behind the microwave tonight for that missing spoon....

Tuesday morn and all is well

It astounds me how different Ireland is when the sun shines. After months and months (and months!) of dreary Winter weather, we had four glorious days and today promises to stay that way... and they fell over a long weekend! Now, I realise that my South African readers will think I'm nuts when I tell you that temperature was around 13 degrees C on Saturday and it was so lovely out that we rushed off to get meat and invited friends around for a Braai (BBQ), because in SA 13 degrees is the dead of winter. Somehow it's different here.
I had a really good long weekend, beginning with Hubby and I going on a breakfast run on the Blackbird on Friday that took us into the Wicklow Mountains to the South of Dublin and lasted pretty much most of the day. Nothing beats an exhilerating ride on the bike on a beautiful day. Then we had our Braai with friends on Saturday, and on Sunday morning we went to the beach. Yes, the beach! OK I admit there was no swimming and we were fully clothed at all times but the sand was warm between my toes and the sun was warm on my face. Warm face and warm toes makes for warm soul, so I was happy :)
Yesterday was a model of decadence, involving apple pie and whipped cream, lots of chocolate, crisps, fizzy cooldrinks and lounging around watching TV*.
Heaven!
Yep, for now, all is well in Terriland :)

~

*By the way, I rather enjoyed "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" - by far the most enjoyable of the poor boy's adventures yet - for me, if not for him.

catastrophic hardware failure

Not the words any I.T. person wants to hear first thing in the morning. It's been a helluva day. But it's not over yet, and because of it I'll be missing the last of this semester's Salsa classes. Bah-bloody-humbug. Especially when I went shopping this weekend and bought the cutest skirt that would be perfect for dancing in, too.

For the last few days I've felt like doing exactly what said hardware did last night - in layman's terms, "ka-plfft". I, too, feel like simply shutting down. Perhaps if I rebooted I'd come back all re-synced, with all my services in perfect running order. Or perhaps, as more often happens, I would simply fail to restart without any good reason. I fear, right now, it might be the latter.

Gosh, aren't I just a little ray of sunshine today?!
Hm... sunshine... not too much of that around here these days. I got caught in a hail/snow/sleet/rain storm on Sunday that skrikked* for nothing. Our Daffodils were showing serious regret at ever having popped their heads out so early in the year. Two of them hanged themselves on the thorny stem of their neighbouring rose bush; can't say I blame them.
But before you all go demanding photographs I gotta tellya: the snow in this place doesn't settle. It falls, it melts. All we end up with is cold wetness - not the makings of picturesque postcard-scene photographs.

So how's the weather where you are?





~



* Literal translation from Afrikaans: got a fright. It loses something in translation.

~

You can't blame me..!

I can be quite mean sometimes, in a subtle and satisfying way.
This morning some itsy-bitsy little blonde chick pushed past me to stand in front of me in the aisle on the train, and proceeded to consume what, up till that point, was performing perfectly well as my space and air. Oh she with her perfect hairdo and cute little button nose.... PFFT!!
So finally two stops before mine, I got a seat... and guess who came and took the seat next to me? Yep, li'll Miss Perfect.
So I couldn't help myself - I waited until she'd just finished opening her magazine and then I stood up so she had to move to let me out.
I know I shouldn't have enjoyed her irritation as much as I did. I'm a nice person... most of the time. Perhaps this week is not one of those times. Irritation levels are up, compassion levels are down.
I blame Eve. If the silly cow hadn't taken a bit of that apple, us women wouldn't have these violent hormones to contend with, would we now?!


~

ups n downs

I feel like I cheated you guys by posting those pics instead of a 'proper' post. Sorry 'bout that... sort of.. teehee..

I'm all emotional today - not in a I-wanna-curl-up-and-die way but in a ooh-that-song-reminds-me-of-boo-hoo-hoo way. I spoke to my li'l sis on the phone earlier. She's flying off to SA this evening to spend Christmas there with the family and I just wish I was going too. I guess I'm homesick. I guess the fact that it's dreary and rainy in a sort of not-bothering-to-get-light-at-all-today sort of way doesn't help either, no matter how many twinkly lights and Christmas carols are about.
So here I am, not depressed, for a change, just a little, er, emotionally fragile today. Today, the day our company puts on a big Christmas Lunch in the canteen (turkey, brussells sprouts, hot pudding, the works) and throws a bash this evening, complete with free drinks (as long as y'all behave yerselves now!). Somehow I didn't feel very festive at lunch but man, am I looking forward to that first drink tonight! Big talk from someone who get's trashed on 2 glasses of wine, I know.

And then it's weekend, thank goodness. I will be learning to ride my new bike that Hubby fetched from the shop this morning - yay!!! Then there's the last of the Christmas shopping to be done. Tomorrow I'm taking young Cinderella with me to go see The Nutcracker ballet. I'm really looking forward to that - I do so love the ballet!
And then next week it's a 4-day week (for me), a day of manic last-minute shopping (no illusions here) and then our friends arrive and hey presto! It's Christmas and I'm left wondering, "Where the hell did the last year go???!"

And I'm going to stop right there because if I don't I'll start thinking about a birthday coming up soon after that where I'll be wondering where the hell the last 35 years went, but we're not going go to there now; I'll save that particular train of thought for another day.

3 days happy

Do I get a medal or something?
;)

How quickly a mood can change. Since my last post mine has improved dramatically. I guess it started when I heard some very, very happy news from a close friend of mine - the sort of news that made my cry happy tears (yes I know I cry at the drop of a hat these days but it really was that sort of news!).
And all of a sudden the world was a better place.

My boss let me go home half an hour early on Friday, just because it was quiet and it was Friday and... well, just because.

I went to the hairdresser yesterday morning and I am really happy with the result (my bad- to good-hair-days since the last haircut have been in the region of 30:1).

And yesterday evening my stepson arrived from SA and will be here for a month.

Those were the highlights but I'm convinced it was that astoundingly happy news from my friend that triggered off my happy feelings. And it feels really good to feel good.
I've had energy galore - got tons of stuff done yesterday including all the housework, and went shopping today in that same mall that I was bitching about last week, and I actually wanted to stay longer to do more shopping today - but poor Hubby had hayfever and the boy-child (although at 17 that nickname doesn't really fit so well anymore, especially since he now towers over me) looked like he'd had enough of trudging through shops for one day so I called it a day when we had almost everything I'd set out for.

Oh, and one more thing. After tossing the idea about for months I have finally made the decision to get myself a small motorcycle - for practical purposes, not just for fun, in case you were wondering. Making decisions is not necessarily my strong point and now that I've made one - one that I'm happy with - I feel like I have accomplished something.

I think we'll put up our Christmas tree tonight. Hubby decided he's tired of finding pine-needles in the house up till July so we've gone for an artificial one that has fibre-optic lights on it. Photos will follow shortly, no doubt.

So it looks like my Christmas Spirit didn't flee the country after all.
Yep, I'm three days happy, and counting.