creative.mother.thinking

explaining my life to strangers

Susanne

how one can tell that I am teaching more than before

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I’m really happy that I have more students to teach. Really. More students mean more money. I no longer have to pinch every penny. And I like teaching. But one can tell that some things have suffered. The blog for example. Since I have been posting a lot of my to-do-lists here, I thought I’d just make it a little more visual this time. So, you can tell that I have been teaching more by:

My congas waiting to be photographed so I can sell them. (Anybody wanting some fabulous Michel Delaporte-congas? They are quite rare.)

Catalogue waiting to be browsed through, note waiting to be given to my husband, books waiting to be put back on shelf. (I fetched the Terry Pratchett book looking for a quote about the monks of cool, because I wanted to write about feeling cool. Well, the quote actually was in another book (the internet told me so), and the post never happened.) Couple of receipts waiting to be entered into computer for budgeting.

Stuff my husband used to polish the aforementioned congas so that they look better in the pictures waiting to be put away.


Wastepaper basket waiting to be emptied. Look at all those candy wrappers. Right where my students can see them. Either it has been a very long time since I last emptied it or I see for the first time why my weight has been going up again. Now venturing outside my room into the living room:

New shelves for DVDs. I put them together, but they are waiting to be installed on top of the ones we already have.

This was given to me for Christmas. I have to put some new wire to it and hang it up.

Kitchen: Toast waiting to be put into freezer bags and to be frozen.


Basement: Laundry waiting to be folded and put away.

Bedroom: More laundry waiting to be ironed, a glass waiting to be recycled, books waiting to be disposed off. Maybe I put those children’s books up for sale too.

My son’s room: projects and pictures waiting to be put away in a tidy manner.

Sigh.

So now you know how I will spend my weekend. What will you do? I hope your weekend has some family fun time in it.

And who knows, maybe there will be some real post from me tomorrow.

And you know what, today is my 39 1/2 th birthday. Only six months left until the -0.

sleep

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The way I have been craving sleep lately you’d think I had a 6-month-old in the house or were insomniac. But it is neither. I can’t say for sure, but it might well be that every single journal entry for the last, um, four years has started with “I am so tired.” (Paper journal, not online thingy, blog.) Maybe this has replaced my obsession with food and feeling fat, who knows. Maybe, and this really is the first time I’m thinking this, this problem I have with sleep stems from the same source as my former eating disorder.

So. Sleep. Just to think of it. Becoming oblivious to the world, resting, dreaming, nesting under warm duvet covers. Bliss. So why do I never sleep enough? I could blame my son; that would be easy. And for years he has been the source of my lack of sleep. But since he turned two years old he has slept beautifully, only disturbed when sick. And, for some reason unknown to us, he keeps on waking up an hour earlier than usual on Saturdays. But since I have heard of children waking up at 5.30 or something, I won’t say anything against him.

I really have no problem with the sleep itself. When I have the feeling of having tossed and turned for ages before getting to sleep, my husband (the official tosser and turner in our family) informs me that it took me all of five minutes to start snoring. (And yes, I really often snore, I am allergic to mold and thus have a year-round snotty nose.) No, when I go to bed, everything is fine. I’m that kind of sleeper who after a nighttime thunderstorm gets up in the morning all rested and when asked, “Wasn’t that a terrible thunderstorm?” says, “What thunderstorm?” I come from a long line of sound sleepers, my parents are famous for their never-disturbed sleep. I lay my head on my pillow and that’s it until morning. When I have a particular restless night, I might wake up and look at the clock, or maybe go to the bathroom. Then I go back and sleep again. This is a very useful talent to have. Especially when faced with a sick child. Wake up, tend to child, go back to bed, fall asleep. Rinse and repeat. (Hey, I should have posted that as my hidden talent in the meme I answered two days ago. Ability to sleep under all circumstances.) I used to be able to sleep in rooms full of people, light and noise, but that’s where I feel my age, that’s no longer possible.

The time when sleep was most precious was, of course, when my son was a tiny baby. When he was born I thought to myself how amazingly easy it was to cope with the lack of sleep. I need a lot of sleep and was very much afraid that I’d be constantly overtired when having him. Well, the real sleep deprivation kicked in a little later. When I was working three days a week, still nursing him around the clock, and then, when he was eight months old, the teething started and he woke me every hour to use me as a human pacifier. Fun was had. At that point I was so tired that I dozed off when my husband told me something and paused for about one second.

But this is long past, we treated this with daddy on night duty for two weeks, teabottle at the ready; mama sleeping in the spare bedroom (soundproofed annex! hurray!) being off duty until 5 am. So after that I could have slept enough. Alas, I didn’t. What I do is this:

I go through my day tired, uttering frequently, “I’m so tired, I’m so tired! But today I will take a nap for sure.” Until it is time for the nap, then I’ll find something really important, like reading blogs, do that until my free time is over, then go through the rest of the day with glazed eyes announcing, “But today I will go to bed on time for sure!” every thirty minutes or so. After bringing my son to bed very slowly, because I’m so tired, I go off to my room, play a little piano or guitar, watch an episode of “Buffy” or two, talk to my husband, say, “Of course I will be going to bed on time today.” sincerely, then switch channels, watch some silly documentary about playboy bunnies or some such, get off the couch at 11, go to bed half an hour later, sleep until my alarm goes off at 6.45. Repeat.

You might say, what is she whining about, if I understand her correctly she gets a whole 7 1/2 hours of sleep. And nowadays everyone and her grandmother seem to think that six hours is enough and seven is plenty. I, on the other hand, do need at least 8 1/2 of sleep, better 9 to feel good and have a functioning brain. And from what I’m hearing and reading I’m not alone. A friend of mine recently told me, “I don’t know, why I am so tired, I am sleeping a full six hours every night.” Duh! I have a book (a good book) “Outsmarting Female Fatigue: Eight Energizing Strategies for Lifelong Vitality” (Debra Waterhouse) which say that most women need an average 8 1/2 hours of sleep. And that everything between 4 and 11 hours is considered normal. That doesn’t mean that it’s normal to sleep only 4 hours, it means that it might be normal for you. But if you’re tired, cranky, constantly hungry, forgetting things, and doze off in front of your TV every night, maybe you need to get more sleep. And maybe you’re somebody who needs 11 hours a night. Ever thought of that? Very inconvenient, but there is no fighting it. When you don’t get enough sleep, you’re tired.

That’s what I’ve been trying to teach my son. When you’re tired, you can eat all you want, it doesn’t help. Only sleeping does. Since having him, I know why people overeat when they’re tired by the way. Tired babies nurse to sleep. So eating provides everything good at once: company, cuddle contact, food, and help to get to sleep. When he was about a year old, he sometimes would literally eat himself to sleep. Fall asleep chewing. Stuffing tremendous amounts of food in his little mouth. That’s when I learned why I am constantly eating when I’m tired. And I like to eat more sugar in times like that, because with the sugar high I get a little boost too.

I’m a little older than a year, so I should know better. I do know better, I only don’t do better. So I’ve been giving myself stickers for going to bed before 11. For three years. Three years! I feel a little pathetic. Um, not just a little. I’ve invented a couple of little tricks. I clean my face and put on moisturizer when I have put my son to bed. I put on my pajama before sitting down to watch my show. I programmed my PDA to beep on bedtime. I have asked my husband to please remind me that it’s time. And for every evening that I have found my way triumphantly to bed before eleven there are two when I just stayed a little longer and went half an hour later. Or two hours later.

I fear I have to get my priorities right. Sleep. Is. Very. Important.

Or like I tell my son constantly: When you’re tired playing is no fun.

Go, have a nap on me.

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another meme

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Ha, I really got tagged this time. Granted, asking somebody “And whom do you tag?” is about as subtle as jumping up and down, frantically waving and yelling “Pick me! Pick me!” on top of you lungs, but still, officially and personally tagged for the first time. Oh, by Meno. Why couldn’t I have reacted to a meme where you don’t have to think, like that itunes-meme I was thinking of stealing. So, questions and answers (and no multiple choice)

1. If you had to choose one vice in exclusion of all others, what would it be?
I didn’t know you get to choose the vices. I’d say over-indulgence. But I could have said beer. But that’s not a vice. Isn’t it?

2. If you could change one specific thing about the world, what would it be?
I would give all people complete awareness and enlightenment. But I think it doesn’t work that way.

3. Name the cartoon character you identify with the most.
Cartoon character? As in animated? I’ll copy this one from Meno and say Daria. I haven’t watched the show on a regular basis, but I liked her a lot.

4. If you could live one day in your life over again, which day would it be?
Well, only if you force me to. Maybe May 1st, 1994, when after our second date, my husband-to-be and I realized that we’d be staying together. It was spring, we went to the station hand in hand, and sat down on a bench looking at green and yellow fields and trees. Sigh. Though I don’t know, I spent the rest of the day working on my dissertation.

5. If you could go back in history and spend a day with one person, who would it be?
A writer I would have loved to meet, but who probably wouldn’t have been that interested in meeting me, would be Carolyn Heilbrun.

6. What is one thing you lost, sold, or threw away that you wish you had back?
Um. No regrets. New things are always so much more exciting.

7. What is your one most important contribution to this world?
Teaching people they can be creative, and that there is another lifestyle apart from being a “muggle”.

8. What is your one hidden talent that nearly no one knows about?
If I have one, it is hidden to me too. Though I may have a very hidden talent for drawing. I never draw, so I’m not good at it, but when I concentrate, sometimes one glances a sparkle of talent, inherited from my father and grandfather.

9. What is your most cherished possession?
This means things, doesn’t it? My piano. Though my computer comes in a close second. I have lived without computer and without piano. Without piano was worse. But then, why should I have to choose? (And if I only had the money, I’d buy a new piano in a split-second.)

10. What one person influenced your life the most when growing up?
Obviously my mother. (If Meno finds that exorcist, send her over to my place too, please.) Second, maybe Dorothy L. Sayers.

(I know it said one person, I’m not stupid, I have listened, but almost everybody is highly influenced by her mother. To say otherwise would be lying. But my mother is not the person that shaped my thinking much.)

11. What word describes you better than any other?
Confused? I’ll settle for complex. Ah, no, now I got it: woman.

Phew, describing a person with one word. I’m certainly not a one-word-person. Even when people are asking me for my sign I’ll say, “Leo with ascendent Sagittarius, but I’m not that fiery, because I have that Saturn on my moon in Aries, and then there’s this whole bunch of planets on top of my horoscope with all that scorpionic and plutonic influence, but my family is very fishy…”)

Okay, I’ve done it. That’s a tough one. So, anybody who wants to do this meme, feel tagged. I’m especially tagging De and Liv, who probably have better things to do with their time. (Psst, and if you’re to cool for memes? Just ignore it.)

I’m feeling good, I’m feeling good!

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Just a few words to tell you that I feel almost normal again. Thanks for you concern and comments. I had wanted to write something longer and more profound, but the day turned out completely different from what I planned. Instead of writing and making music, I spent the morning running errands with my husband and then eating Chinese food. And then he made me happy by saying, “You know, I never told you, but though I criticize you all the time, I love you just the way you are. Even your faults.” Wow.

still a little low

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(Just when you think you don’t know when to blog again, a student calls in sick. I hope she’ll be well soon, but this was my present for today.)

Still feeling a little low. Though I haven’t written here, I still have time to think. And I don’t like the phrase “I don’t have time”, because it isn’t true. I did lots of things during the past days, but I didn’t sit down and wrote anything. Maybe that’s my punishment. I had a writer’s meeting on Thursday and everybody went, “Oh, I just don’t know what to write about on my blog.” and I bragged, “Oh, having ideas is never the problem for me. Following them through is.” So for anybody interested in a topic, the topics I have waiting in line are: handicapped, sleep, transitions, life coaching, self-sacrificing mothers. Feel free to write about them if they appeal to you.

But for now I’ll write about the thing that is occupying me the most and that is depression. Maybe that is a “social justice” topic. It surely should be. (And I don’t really know where the line between personal and social is. They blur into another anyway.) I’m hesitating, because I don’t feel qualified to write about depression. But I don’t find another word to describe the mood I am in. It is like the problem I had when I found out I had an eating disorder. I watched TV and there were a couple of overeaters describing their eating patterns. They described my eating patterns exactly. Only I didn’t weigh 300 pounds. To this day most people who have known me for a long time think that I am a hypochondriac when I label myself as a former emotional overeater.

So I have light bipolar extra-light. Whatever. Currently there is a part of me that has gone numb, wants to go numb, a part that is constantly sitting in a corner wrapping her arms around herself. It feels like I’m wading through mud and rolling a boulder uphill all day long while having a vortex in my stomach. I’m tempted to feed the vortex food, chocolate in particular. And numb it with staring into the computer or TV. My energy is very low, I haven’t been sleeping well, I have been eating more than usual, especially more candy, I’m cranky and when my husband points out something to me that I forgot – and that happens a lot these days – I burst into tears.

And then there’s the other part of me, the aware and mindful part, that’s quite happy. The new conscious part of me that loves the sunshine and goes on exercising and doing housework, the part of me that goes out with friends and makes jokes and cares about herself and others. This is weird. I keep thinking that if only can immerse myself in that happy feeling the heavy rock in my stomach will melt. As it will, as it always does. It’s not that I’m depressed all the time.

When I still lived alone I treated this mood as if I were sick. I went to bed and didn’t get up for days. I went out only to get more potato chips, jelly beans, liquorice and chocolate. I’d sleep long enough to make me feel even weaker. I’d withdraw completely. Now I live with my family and this is no longer possible. I’m very happy about this, because not doing anything makes me feel even worse. I feel better, when I get out of the house and walk through the woods. When I eat real food my mood lifts a little.

In a comment to my last post Esereth wrote that there are deep reasons for depression and that I can kill it when I find out what’s causing it. So far I only have been able to find triggers: visiting my parents, not sleeping enough, not making enough music, staying indoors too much, listening to daily talk about the end of the world (okay, that was exaggerated). And who knows, maybe there is a part in me that loves this mood. I suspect this is the counterpart to the part that wants to have a highly streamlined, efficient, goal-oriented life. The hyper-organizer in me. And of course I haven’t played enough. There is the voice in me that once was my mother’s voice (and occasionally still is in real life) that says, “Who do you think you are?” There is the fact that there is winter and light is sparse. There is the fact that I am exhausted and overwhelmed. And there is the fact that I have been in manic overdrive mode for weeks without realizing it. That’s usually the main factor.

So, if there is a reason it may be the one that this lifetime around it is my turn to learn how to be persistent. I am not good at this. I’d like to live life in bursts and crashes. Work like crazy for a couple of weeks and then retreat to bed and do nothing for a couple of weeks. Either be the center of the party, shining, laughing, dancing, singing and telling funny stories or to stay at home and be alone. I could do that. I have done it often enough. The only catch is that it makes me neither happy nor content. So I’ll have to learn the “boring” path. The one where every day is the same as the last one. Where you work constantly without burning out.

I have a friend who told me that she feels slightly bipolar too. I asked her, “And what do you do about it?” She said that she just tries to enjoy that manic streaks and to treat herself as well as she can, when she’s depressed. I can’t accept that for my life. For one, real bipolar disorder is dangerous when not treated. The depression gets deeper and longer, and there are people turning suicidal. I don’t think that my mood swings qualify for a real disorder. I’m sure, if I’d go to a doctor with this, he’d laugh out loud. (And I have done the tests in my bipolar disorder books, thank you.)

But then there isn’t only healthy and sick. There are shades of grey in between. My first step now is to acknowledge that this is something I can’t control. No power of will can make me feel happy. If I ignore it, it comes back and hits me over the head. While at the same time I think that we can choose our emotions, I’m not yet able to do it constantly. And I think the main problem for me is to avoid overdrive mode. So my problem boils down to: How do you know whether you’re slightly manic or just extremely busy? And if I suspect that I’m in overdrive does that mean I cancel everything? Like my son’s kindergarten Christmas party? The trip to my parents that was higly anticipated by them and my son? Christmas? NaNoWriMo? And I can’t turn to my husband to help me, because he is showing symptoms of exhaustion too.

Thanks for listening to me. I’ll go to bed on time today. I promise.

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5 things you don’t know about me and just post

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First of all, today is the day of the very first “just post” awards.

I had planned to write a beautiful post about handicapped people, but then life got in the way and you’ll have to wait for that one. Since the “just post”-award is still very young, there hasn’t been that much participation yet, but we’ll just promote it in the months to come. Oh, and this award was the result of the big fat social wedding of Jen and Mad. Since I’m really pressed for time today (and since I’ve really been wanting to do this for quite a time), I consider myself tagged with the “5 things you don’t know about me”-meme by Mir. (And when I say that you don’t know these things I’m thinking of people only knowing me through the blog, not of people like my sister, though she reads this too.)

  1. I didn’t drink a single drop of alcohol until I was 19 years old. I even refused to sip on something for social reasons. To this day my mother still is shocked, when she sees me drinking a beer. As Mir told about herself, I also was the designated driver for years, and was proud of my high morale standard. I felt very superior to people behaving like a typical drunk. I have to say, though, that even when drunk I never behave like a typical drunk. Like my husband, I only react by first being a little bit louder, then a blurring of speech, and then becoming a little more quiet.
  2. I smoked my very first cigarette when I was eight years old. Me and a couple of friends tried smoking behind a group of bushes in the woods. We felt really grown up and cool. Growing up in a smokers’ household, I neither had to cough or got sick. I held and lit the cigarette like I had done this my whole life. When later I tried to get more cigarettes by stealing a pack or two from my parents, I was found out. Thus ended my career as a smoker. I tried again four years later, but decided not to smoke. I never regretted it.
  3. Every man I ever had sex with was a musician. At first I had a pattern of percussionist, bass player, percussionist, bass player, but then I wandered and dated a pianist and later a clarinet player. Also, I never know how you count it, when you’re having an affair with two men at once. (I had an “open relationship” with the first bass player. Well, I can say this does not work for me.) The last one was also a bass player whom I then married. End of dating history so far, but, I’m grateful to say, not of sex.
  4. You know that when I studied music education my main instrument was – as it still is – voice, but what you don’t know is that my second instrument used to be drums. (Now you know how I met the percussionists.) People who haven’t seen me since that days still think of me as the drummer, but I haven’t touched drums since the end of our Brazilian band seven years ago. (Anyone interested in buying my congas?)
  5. As I’m writing this, I’m depressed again. Not as in “not-functioning and nearly suicidal”-depressed, but as in “feeling as if there were a vortex inside of me sucking away most of my energy”-depressed. Since wondering if I maybe am slightly bipolar, I haven’t had another “episode”. Only things like PMS. Before Christmas my husband said he thought I might be in a “manic” state. Of course I wasn’t, I only had a lot to do. Um. And I didn’t feel like I was soaring high. I didn’t take on lots of new projects. Mild overdrive due to circumstances. But since we returned from my parents I have been glued to the computer, checking e-mail about every other second, reading blogs and waiting for the evening which I spent in front of TV. Then going to bed too late, of course. And repeat. With the firm intention to do better the next day. And repeat. After four days of this, it dawned on me that this was not normal. I was feeling depressed. On Sunday I thought I had come out of it. Only to realize today that I’m still in it. The problem is, in a way, that I don’t have times anymore where I declare myself sick despite a lack of symptoms and then spend days in bed. I’m no longer living alone, I have work to do, I have family. And I know that I don’t feel better, when I’m staying in bed. So I get up, I make breakfast, I do minimal household chores, I talk to my family, I even am happy at times, but there’s a part inside of me that has gone numb and wishes to stay that way. I know that eventually I will come out of it and that exercise, enough sleep, real food, cuddling and walks in the woods help. But I don’t know what’s happening. There are triggers, but there are no deep reasons. Weird.

So this is the reason, why I haven’t posted, why I’m sounding a little off.

So this month I’ll have to rely on others to change the world for the better. Please go and look at the just post awards. (And don’t worry about me, please.)

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