A Roll in the Universe

Yesterday's grouchiness was a warning. My body and my moods are basically klaxons trying to get my attention. This morning I had no energy, no desire, no absent Grumpy. He was still with me. He had a message. I hate when I'm like this. I hate that my emotions so easily rise to the surface and I have neither the inclination nor the ability to force them back down, not even when the situation demands that I do. (Blowing up at work is a really bad idea.) I got a reminder today that dealing with mental exhaustion, with panic attacks and its attendant issues, takes time. I was feeling too good Tuesday. I know now that I was not on the way up, but out of balance. Yesterday that lack of balance made itself known. I thought I'd headed it off at the pass, armed with hugs, but nope. On a good day I can wrestle with my feelings, but on a good day I'm not even in this battle. So I'm trying to face a dragon and all I can muster is a "whatever". It takes energy to

So, as usual, I am Mercurial and go up and down more than a rollercoaster. After a great day yesterday—which I realize now may have taken more out of me than I thought, with all that talking to the psychologist—I ended up grumpy today. Total raincloud-right-over-my-head grumpy. Grumpy At the end of the day, a co-worker caught up with me and I admitted I was frustrated, annoyed, and feeling grouchy. Whereupon she gave me a proper, squishy, ribcage-melding bear hug. In fact, such a good and helpful hug we both started to tear up. Now, that is some serious hugging! And yes, it did chase the proverbial raincloud away. PS: My favorite dwarf was Grumpy because I related best to him. Still do. PPS: WordPress is rolling out a new blog editor called Gutenberg and it's, uhm, well, at times raincloud-inducing. :-D

I am in love with the city light rail in Bergen, Norway, called "bybanen" (BEE-bah-nen). It took five years after it was built for me to actually ride the darned thing, but after that, it has become my most popular modern addition to this old medieval town. And now they're building a line to my neck of the woods! I am excited about getting the light rail in 2022! Yeah, that is a long way off. They started digging in February of this year. I walk past the construction site for the station in Fyllingsdalen (the suburb where I live and work) nearly daily. I've been trying to document (sort of) the changes construction is creating in my neighborhood. The start of construction of "bybanen" in Fyllingsdalen, March 2018 5 months later and all those pipes on first picture are underground Bergen being Bergen, there are strong opinions for and against the light rail. A lot of people think it's a waste of space and money, inferior to better bus route

The final day of being lyrically challenged (in more ways than one), thanks to one of my inspirations for blogging, Paula at Light Motifs . If you're feeling inspired, please do your own challenge and let me know about it! And now for the third song with lyrics I not only paid attention to, but also bothered to learn by heart. But that came later, because when this song first played on the radio back in 1979, it made me cry. Every. Single. Time. This is one song that is on the short list as a song you may play at my funeral (the other songs are mostly happy disco tunes so bring dancing shoes). It is "The Rose" by Bette Midler. Teen years are intense years, and the evening I saw the movie "The Rose" has moments that I will never forget. I had two friends at the time (I always end up in a trio of two girls and a guy; I'm on my third such grouping), Ann and Grant (hi, Ann!), and we went to see "The Rose". I drove us to the movie theater in my littl

My comfort zone: Sitting on a bus on a rainy day I don't like ever talking about what goes on deep inside of me. A few close friends may find out, but not co-workers or you, my reader. But the truth is, I've gotten a taste of what it is like to be struggling with something psychological. And I've decided to let you in on that. I have a busy mind, and a strong sense of responsibility or duty. That sort of thing easily leads to stress because I've lost the ability to say "no" without guilt. So anxiety has been creeping up on me for almost two years. It's mostly work, but that means that anything bad happening outside of work becomes harder than it needs to be because I have nothing extra to give. I canceled a trip to Czechia this summer. Prague, home of the astrolabe clock tower, is a city I've wanted to see for years. But it went back on my bucket list due to being so utterly stressed out I couldn't even think about packing without crying. I

It is Day 2 of the song lyric challenge that Paula at Light Motifs has lobbed at me. With friends like that, et cetera. So I mentioned yesterday that I'm not really aware of what people are singing because not enough enunciation. (By the way, I was double-checking that I had the right word, and discovered it's not spelled "annunciation", which is a totally different thing . Heh.) There was a time when being proud of America and happily waving the flag and feeling all kinds of good was the norm, rather than either a rarity or something that now makes you throw up in your mouth a little (take your pick). Point is, things have changed since the 1970's. But at the time, even if we got pretty beaten up during that decade, too, with resigning presidents, falling Saigons, soaring gas prices and waiting hostages, we still had reason to like ourselves and the rest of the world sort of usually liked us, too. And there was always the Muppets to give one a bit of repriev

I have been challenged by Paula at Light Motifs to do three days of song lyrics. I thank Paula for making me update my blog (no, really, I needed this) but I have no one else who is actively blogging to pass the challenge on to. That doesn't matter. I don't do anything that reminds me of chain letters, anyway. :-D I rarely listen to lyrics because I rarely catch what they're singing, anyway. But some songs had a singer with good enunciation, and even good lyrics, and so I became aware of the words. A favorite band of mine from the 70's is Little River Band, originally from Australia. I still listen to their 70's stuff (because I don't know if they did 80's or even 00's stuff), and some songs put me right back in California. They had that mellow, west-coast soft-rock sound. And good lyrics. Several of their songs tell good stories, dealing a punch here, a good tug on the heart there. LRB became a part of the tapestry of my life in late 70's Cal