Bats In My Belfry

I want a bunny like this! Can you imagine what it would be like? Supposedly this bunny weighs 10 kg. I think that’s a bit of an underguesstimation. Looks a lot heavier than that. He’s supposedly a “Giant German Rabbit”. Looks like I need to do some Googling.

And just to show that it’s not a hoax I found this link whilst Googling. I expect that we can believe Snopes.

Blogged with Flock

I’ve put it off long enough. Never going to get anywhere if I don’t just start. So I’ve grabbed some waste cotton yarn, some 4.0mm DPNs and have cast on ala this site. I will finish this come hell or high water.

I know I’m asking for it with this yarn…it’s splitty and cantankerous at the best of times but the way I see it is if I can manage to come up with something even remotely resembling a sock with this stuff, all to the good. Guess I need to haul out the camera so I can do blow-by-blow photos…it’s going to be funny, I’m sure.

Raining like hell tonight in spurts. Lines of rain are coming through. I have to admit I’m gleeful that TTS is the one who has the “Doggie Con”. He wasn’t too happy about having to go out in the rain (given his detestation for water…TTS, not HRH) but I am not feeling overly sorry for him given that the first 2 weeks we had HRH it always rained when it was my turn. No exaggeration. Always. I expect shortly they will be back with TTS moaning about getting wet. Heh.

I disappeared for a long time mainly because, well, I went nuts.
Starting last summer (2006) I began to have daily (and sometimes multiple times per day) panic attacks. I wasn’t a stranger to them, had them here and there over time starting in my early 30s. If memory serves they were always attached to some sort of easily correlated event (stressful occurence). What boggled me last summer is that nothing in particular had happened and these attacks were fierce. They would wake me out of a sound sleep, heart pounding, chest contracted, throat convulsed…very frightening.  I was freaked. I think I spent a month in agony being terrified and withdrawn because of being so scared. Then I started realising that I had an identifiable problem.

And I am working on it, still.
Been a rough year because this sort of thing can take over your life (it did) until you face it and start to contend with it. TTS doesn’t “get” it although he has learned to accept when I say “uhmm, bad day, might give me a bit of leeway here” or “had a bad night” etc. OTOH, his mother twigged to it rather quickly and realised that I was struggling mightily.

I’ve learned a lot, faced a lot and still have a lot more work to do. Originally I thought this would settle down as it had in the past by just letting time pass. Unfortunately that isn’t going to happen, I’m “stuck” (meh!). It’s more difficult too because there aren’t any therapists or P-docs around here fluent enough in English to work with so I need to do the work on my own. Worse, I kept thinking it would just go away. It apparently isn’t going to and so I’ve set myself on a course of CBT work after a great deal of research.

I have good days and bad days. The bad days are more annoying than anything, I am no longer scared of the symptoms knowing what they are and where they come from. The good days are precious and I am learning to enjoy them to the fullest.

Recently I went through a period of extreme anger about this. Well, anger and “why me”. More anger though. And that set me off into a 4 day tizzy. But I persevered and learned even from that.

So, one of my bits of therapy (along with daily exercise, daily learning, daily work on my addled brain) is to write here. At first I got the collywobbles thinking about it: what if someone sees this? Good. Fine, let ‘em. Maybe they’ll learn something, maybe they’ll recognise something and it will help them to get help and face their reality.

Of course not everything written here will be about my efforts in this direction but I imagine there will be days when I haul off and rant or have insights or just pat myself on the back.

It’s a journey, bumpy road but beats just sitting there getting run over by life.
Even if it does sometimes feel like a bunch of rabid monkeys have taken over my brain.

Blogged with Flock

Blatantly stolen from What Not To Knit, showed to my husband (who  got scared) and  then giggled over for quite a few minutes.

That poor damn dog.

Blogged with Flock

Boy, way to screw up an entry. I hate this insert picture thing with the sloppy code that sites give you to do so. Okay, trying again…

<—”Neemer”

Bwa! Got it this time.

Anyway….let’s see…oh yeah, this is HRH Nemo, Graf Von Appenzeller (that made the spell checker go wonky) our Sennenhund/something-or-other-else (I guess German Shepard). He decided to come home with us on 31 May 2007. Life has changed…a lot since he did.
I now get up every morning (early…like at first sunrise but that changed because of the sheer amount of other crazy dogwalkers out) to walk him. TTS has the late shift (2000+) and I cover the dayshift. Thought I was gonna die the first couple weeks. Going from “life is lived in front of the computer” to “large dog who needs lots of exercise must drag me all over southern Germany” was one hell of an adjustment. Kind of amusing to track the pain…feet first (was walking him wearing my usual Birks…bad, bad idea), then knees (always have had bad knees) and finally my lower back. Oddly the lower back was the worst of it. I was nearly doubled over as the muscles objected (firmly) to this abuse. Happily after about the first 3 weeks my body realised that it could bitch, holler, scream, attempt to refuse but HRH MUST GO OUT WALKIES.

And I really don’t mind a bit. Been good for me, big time. Have grown to love the quiet time first thing in the morning. Watching the fields change as the season progesses, the sky, the various other critters (mice, skunk, birds) but mostly, just the time moving, breathing and being out in the world.

Neemer ran away from (his first) home and ended up in the Tierheim. I was a bit leery about this at first and he does have some “baggage” (does NOT like older men especially if they have been drinking…yoiks). He is headstrong (guess that’s a breed thing) and quite intelligent. Can even be sly. Very loveable, very easy going except…with the cats.
He will not settle around the cats and they are freaked out by him. Really upset me at first because he had shown no interest in the cats at the Tierheim, I expected him to be the same here. No. Not even. He tries to herd them and we all know about “herding cats”. They took a serious dislike to this. Well after some thinking we now have child-gates all over the place. The cats can get behind them and avoid being herded. I can stop having nervous breakdowns and we are progressing. As I understand eventually this will get resolved by itself but it was sad that things didn’t work out straight away.

Turns out that TTS is scared of dogs. Never told me this. So when we get this great big, active, boneheaded, stubborn, very smart dog home, TTS tells me “Uh…I dunno what to do with dogs.”. Gnah. So, I’m training both of ‘em. So far? Neemer is the faster study. But TTS is learning and I am very, very proud of him for facing up to his fear and diving in as he has. That took guts.

Well, time to walk HRH again. And it’s a beautiful day for it.

Yup. Lost interest, life got crazy, I wandered off. I probably will again. It’s like me to do that sort of thing. So now checking out what has changed since I was last here.

Life in Germany is, well, still life in Germany. I still stick out like a sore thumb but I’m less arsed about it than I used to be. Weather this summer is strange; hot for a few days, then cools off and rains a lot and then repeats. Probably driving the tourists nuts which is fair enough as they drive us nuts.

Ought to go check my “Things - 2006″ bit. Be interesting to see how that ended up.

Ah well…time to walk the dog (yes, new doggie!)