Life is funny

As a teenager trying to figure out what to do for a living, I really wanted a job where I'd be making things with my hands. However, the realist (or was it the pessimist?) in me knew that to make a living out of being creative meant heavy competition, having a lot of talent, a lot of good luck, and working hard. The working hard didn't scare me off, but I didn't want to bet too much on my talent and luck. So I opted for the bookish road, and academia, which was not an unpleasing path anyway.

At the end of my university time I had developed another dream, one which involved settling down somewhere in rural Wales, and having a homestead or similar, and being self-sufficient with veg, fruit, meat etc. Again my inner realist knew that it would be a challenge, so better to opt for a job or two in Denmark before taking the leap down onto that path.

And I finally did land a job. Which meant that at the same time my parents were moving to the small island where mum grew up, I was heading for the other end of the country to work. Things started alright, but finally a number of things which had been developing over years caught up with me, and I found myself sidelined by depression. Sick leave helped a bit, but I came back too soon. And various other issues which are too many, and frankly too bad for me to want to dwell on, meant that I found myself leaving North Denmark to seek refuge with my parents, lick my wounds and recover, and then look around for the way forward from there.

 But somehow I didn't really seem to get any better. In some ways, in fact, it seemed like I was getting worse. Some good did happen, such as realizing that if I belonged any place in Denmark, it was here on Ærø. I would be able to commute for my next job, and perhaps combine that with working from home. Or perhaps even start as a self-employed translator. Which is why we ended up buying a house for me here. With an apple orchard and a bit of land to the property.

And then came the day when I was so sick and tired and weary of it all, that I asked to be admitted to hospital. Signing that paper was in some ways one of the toughest things I have ever done. In many other ways, it was one of the easiest. It was in any case easier than when I had signed my job contract. That is how I got to spend 3 nights in our local hospital towards the end of the year, mostly being a vegetable. The staff were awesome and were shocked to hear I had been living off my savings during all of the time. When I was sent home, it was with medications, strict orders that I went home to my home, not my parents, and that as soon as the Town Hall was open again to file for the sick pay I was entitled to.

Thus it was I ended up in the system, and other people were involved in figuring out how to get on. I won't bother with the long and tedious story. The important thing is that after a few years I was sent to a consulting psychiatrist who gave me two diagnoses. One was that I suffer from recurring depressions, and I would probably face the rest of my life on my medication. The other was a psychiatric illness.

Have you ever thought about how you would react if you were handed a psychiatric diagnosis?

I hadn't. But I know what was going on in my brain when she told me.

One half of me was running around like a headless chicken, using very colourful language, and horrified at being some sort of madman, and probably needing locking up. And the other half was crying and dancing with relief and joy at being told, that I was, in fact, normal, at least in regards to the bits and bobs which make up my mind. It's just not the standard set of bits and bobs. And I wasn't a lazy, good-for-nothing, stupid, doddering idiot. In fact, she stressed the fact that I was in possession of a good intellect. That has held me up many times.

I won't bother about regaling the road from there on to getting a temporary pension (several times) before finally getting a permanent one. Because that is not the important part of this particular story. No, it is rather the observations made during those periods.

I have grown up watching my mum and her mum doing all sorts of textile crafts. Mostly knitting and cross stitching. I had actually done both as a teenager, but it had slid along the side. But during the years before getting the diagnosis and then the following ones, I had picked up knitting again as a way of not losing it altogether. It was a way of keeping my hands, and my mind occupied. People would comment if they saw me without any knitting. And it dawned upon me after I started getting the temporary pension, that I was getting money, and I was spending my days knitting.

This was not what my teen-aged self had envisioned, but in a funny, backward sort of way I was being paid to make stuff with my hands. And after I finally got my first chickens almost three years ago, well, this isn't Wales, and I doubt I'll ever be able to get all my mad dreams of my twenties fulfilled, but it is rural, and I am taking baby steps toward some sort of self-sufficiency.

Life is funny. Funny peculiar, though considering the almost happy ending, funny ha ha could fit too.
Because in a very roundabout way, and nothing like what I had hoped for or dreamed of, I find myself more or less doing what I had wanted to.

I recently saw a quote on a website I frequent: "Sometimes the bad things that happen in our lives put us directly on the path to the best things that will ever happen to us".

Yes. That can happen. And this is what I try to focus on when I have my bad days, or my really bad days, and whenever I get frustrated by the effects that my mental health has upon my abilities and everyday life. Because it isn't all fun and games. It is often a struggle and a battle. But bit by bit, I am going to strive to get closer towards my dreams. It wasn't the way I wanted to follow to get there, but I'll take this opportunity to build my life up again in a way that gives me satisfaction.

This is one of the reasons I have started this blog. Because if some part of my journey before and onward, how I cope with my situation and slowly build up a full life in spite of things, can help or inspire somebody else struggling with some illness or accident which means their lives take a turn down a totally unexpected - and undesired - path, then that is worth sharing.

Crash and Burn

So.

Today I had planned on bringing you a post about the Cluck Brigade. That is, about my chickens. That is not going to happen. Because yesterday in the late afternoon I experienced one of my crash and burn episodes.

What is a crash and burn episode? Basically, it is when I have been doing pretty okay up to when suddenly, out of the blue, I'm no longer doing okay. Where my brain just ceases to function, and small things suddenly turn into huge obstacles, and slightly challenging tasks turn into impenetrable mountain ranges.

There is only one thing to do when that happens, and that is to accept that your brain is not going to be up to anything more that day, and immediately cancel all plans for the rest of that day, and just try to make it through.

Often this means that the next day will have to be slow. Not necessarily nothing going on, but I need to make sure there's lots of time to relax and recover.

So, why do these crash and burn events happen? Well, my guess is that I have probably been overdoing things during the previous days. Perhaps not enough to notice it. But enough to be adding up on an invisible calculator, and then at some point, BOOM! Crash and burn, baby, crash and burn.

I suspect that this particular incident has its roots in my very productive Friday morning where I think I managed to run four or five errands and go into four different shops. I did take the rest of the Friday off, and had a slow Saturday, but I probably should have been slower the following days too.

The good thing about this episode is that it has been a while since the previous one, and that I was actually able to realize I was in the process of crashing and was able to catch myself before burning. Also, I was pretty fortunate to have started prepping for supper rather early, because this meant I was more or less done with the cooking when it happened. So I had a decent supper. I have a small stock of miso sachets and soba noodles or instant noodle packets for times like these. Because feeding myself becomes one of the huge obstacles during a crash and burn.

So yesterday I had to give up hopes of writing about the chickens and finding pics, and also cancel my participation in the local garden society board meeting. Not least because it involved a long car drive, and I do NOT want to be behind the wheel at these times. Our traffic is not massive, but I wouldn't trust my reaction skills if anything out of the ordinary happened. And my brain is still not up to hunting for pics and writing non-rambling posts. So you'll have to wait for next week for a formal introduction to the chickens, and settle for me rambling.

What's in your fridge? 12th May

What does your fridge look like? Is it overflowing with stuff, much of it very possibly beginning to show signs of intelligent life?

I seem to swing from that scenario over to the one where the fridge is almost as bare as Old Mother Hubbard's cupboard.

Today, my fridge looks like this:

It's sort of medium stuffed today.

If we start with the door I have cheese and butter at the top. I bought two types of goat's cheese Friday and have been munching my way through them. The next shelf is the chutney shelf. Yes. Those are six different chutnies in there. Then there's the shelf with yeast, tomato concentrate and open sachets of kitty food. Then there's the mayo, bbq-type sauces and maple syrup and truffle balsamic cream. It is much less crowded than it used to be, and the mayo is a newcomer, because my collection of bbq-type sauces has all but vanished. I think I used to have four or five. The bottom is milk - and to be honest, I'm not quite sure what the others are. I guess this is a cue for me to check them out and possibly get rid of them.

Then there's the fridge proper. I strive to keep all my veg and possible fruit in the drawers down at the bottom. It's not quite working at the moment, because several of the drawers are awaiting washing, because there were things in them which, well, new lifeforms were being created in there. But those are the things from last week's veggie box which still haven't been eaten yet.

The top shelf is my "ingredients" shelf. This is where I keep my bottles of ready-made stock, various jars and bottles of Asian ingredients, olives, sun-dried toms in oil, creams and spreads currently open, and similar goodies of a long-life nature. They are the items I use when making stews or more fancy food.

And in between those I have bacon, chicken meat from making chicken stock this weekend, more milk, feta cheese for a couple of things I hope to make this week, cherry syrup - store-bought and some I made myself, a jar of home-made cherry jam, an open bottle of weird beer which has been there since I don't know when, pasteurized egg yolks and egg whites, ready-made pie dough and filo pastry.

I have plans of using the filo with part of the feta and some spinach from my freezer to make small parcels, possibly including some minced lamb. The rest I want to try to use as a filling in regular home-made white bread. Using part or all of the chicken and some of the veg to make a curry would give me cause to use some of the chutney. The pie dough is destined for a quiche Lorraine, along with the bacon chunks. The bacon rashers will be breakfast one day with an egg or two from my pantry.

This more or less sums up the state of my fridge today. Tune in after a fortnight to see if I have managed to toss the old beer and wash the veg drawers. And possibly discovered what the bottles in the door contain.

Having It All

This magnet lives on my fridge. It's a quote of Cicero, and translated into English it reads "If you have a garden and a library, then you lack nothing". I bought it over 20 years ago, because it summed up pretty much what I wanted in life. It has faded over the years, but it isn't going to leave my fridge unless it breaks.

Not all feel that way. A friend of mine who was visiting, looked at it and said, "Yes. I need a gardener!"

Yeah, she's not all that much of a garden person. She'd rather spend her time doing other stuff. Reading is a good guess. And I will admit, there are times when it would be terrific to just tell someone to "Go do this, and then do that, and finish off with the other", instead of having to go out and do it yourself.

But there are times when there is so much truth in those words. Like when we're sort of halfway through spring, and these things are in your garden:

That's my cherry tree. It isn't looking at its best because of course, today's weather has been a mess. It's very blustery and has been rather wet. The sun peeks out every now and then, but not for long. But hopefully the weather won't batter the flowers before insects have had a chance to do their thing, so that a few months down the line, I can pick cherries.

  These are some charmingly pointy tulips growing in my driveway. When the sun is out they open up and form a spiky star.

 And further down the driveway I have loads of grape hyacinths. And I love these guys. They are so willing to procreate, that I am gradually getting large swathes of them.

At the moment I am working on making the front garden look better and will have to dig them all up and spread them out after weeding, but in a few years' time, I might have a whole bed of them.







When you get these sorts of beauties cropping up, you feel pretty darn good about being the Head Gardener of your own personal patch of Heaven. Unless of course the weather behaves badly. Like today. That's when your library steps in and takes over.

Veggie box tales: Getting back in

Once more I am subscribed to a veggie box. I get the small box, which comes every other week. I originally started off with the large one, but that was way too much for me to eat my way through. Even the small box can provide a challenge for me. It takes effort to focus on my diet, and the past months I un-subscribed, because I knew I wouldn't be able to cope with it. Now things seem to be easing up and so I am subscribed again. And getting excited about it.

And today, Tuesday 5th, I got my first batch of veggies after a break of several months.

Actually, that wasn't the exact contents of my box. There was a head of lettuce in it, and I don't really do lettuce. However, mum gets the big box, and knows about me and lettuce, and she likes the stuff, and she offered to trade it for the bunch of carrots. And carrots I can do. So out with the lettuce, in with the carrots. That trade also added more colour to the lot.

So, what is in there?

There's a bag of kale at the top, then a kohlrabi, the carrots, leeks and a celeriac. Below those there's parsnips, onions, a cucumber, and then finally a stalk of lemongrass, a chili, lemon and a fresh garlic.

And now for the fun part - figuring out how to eat them all.

I suspect I'll be using the kale to make a Danish dish called "grønlangkål" which is basically cooked kale in a white sauce. I am considering using part of the celeriac, and one each of the leeks, parsnips, and onions, and a few carrots to pop in a soup pot along with one of the chickens in my freezer. The kohlrabi will probably prove the trickiest of the lot. Along with the chili.

I'll be spending the rest of the day cooking up a meal plan for the next week or two, and figure out how to get through these. One of the reasons I started subscribing to a veggie box was to make it easier to get more veg in my diet. And meal planning in general helps me to eat better.