There was a time when as soon as I came to write a journal entry - either one for my own consumption in a handwritten notebook in years gone by or more recently a computerised entry which most likely would be put out for public perusal - my mind would flood with 'context information'. By that I mean information about where I was as I was writing, what I had been doing recent hours or days and what reasons I had for making the journal entry. Things are not quite the same now, and (as I believe I have mentioned under related circumstances) I cannot tell to what degree the different way my mind operates now is down to ageing (on the one hand) or dopamine-blocking medication (the other possible causative factor).
However, with a little effort and not as naturally or inescapably as in those times gone by, I can bring out what I am doing and what is happening around me as I write this morning. Most recently - within the past twenty minutes - I have been eating cheese thins and drinking a cup of coffee. Dawn has gall-stones and thinks some of the items we were eating on our diet weren't suiting her; hence we have come off the diet completely. At the last count I had put back on half a stone of the stone (almost a stone) I had lost thanks to the diet. I regret no longer being on the diet, because with my weight lower I was less puffed when walking or doing other physical activity, and generally felt fitter and better in myself. But since Dawn is not doing the varied and enticing recipes she was following for the diet I have thrown in the towel and am eating quantity rather than quality to become satiated. A few days ago I felt the absence of biscuits as a snack between meals - whereas on the diet we would plan carefully what snacks we were allowed and they were non-fattening such as celery or yogurt - so yesterday while shopping at the Co-op I added packets of biscuits to my basket. Hence I have cheese thins.
Another thing I was doing, say an hour ago, was copy my Tweets for January so far from the feed in my own profile of my own Tweets. A few months ago I wrote a VB program to turn these into a version suitable for basing my 'Twitter diary' on which I upload to my website (and the main thing needing doing is inverting the feed so the most recent Tweets are at the bottom) but recently (I cannot tell why) copying-and-pasting from web pages on my computer has become very slow if scrolling down for more than one screen (or more than the height of the screen if it is a continuous feed). Therefore I had planned to copy my Tweets every week instead of at the end of each month, that is copy them into a simple text file to use my VB program on. But so far in January I had not remembered to do so. I have now created the text file for January up to yesterday, but doing it was quite tedious so I must try to improve from February on.
Another thing I did this morning - this something I do every morning around 3 am - was my online banking, that is keeping track of spending and income for yesterday's date so that I do not get into the confusion I was in around 2009-2010 when I was not on any medication. I must say that wasting money partly because of confusion (and partly from overly excited and mistakenly premissed activity) was an unfortunate feature of being unwell - as I must accept it should be called - when I was not on medication.
Now I come to what I had in mind as the reason to make this blog entry. I will interject that I follow other people's life stories through their blogs and online activity and it can be frustrating if they do not let us know what is going on (so I apologise to anyone who reads my Twitter diary for the late preparation of the December 2013 edition). Of course following people in that way is risky because sometimes they just disappear - no more online publishing, at least under the name they had been using - and it can leave the reader feeling cheated.
The most significant single factor in my life at present - or certainly the most significant factor involving change - is the home move we are going through. After we thought we had sold our bungalow in the spring and then it fell through, we have been worried that the recently concluded agreement to sell it might equally come to nothing. To make sure of the sale we decided that rather than wait for our purchase of a house in Harworth to go through we would move into temporary accommodation, and my step-daughter (the one whose home we looked after at New Year) offered to put us up. In any case the house we had put in an offer for is not now available because the people whose house the lady we were buying from was going to have, they decided they weren't selling after all.
We have since found another house in Harworth, have put in an offer which was accepted, and are proceeding with the survey and legal arrangements, and are hoping it concludes sooner rather than later. But still it isn't going to conclude in a few days so the upshot is we are moving out from Kingswinford and going to my step-daughter's next week. The sale of our bungalow is done - contracts were exchanged a few days ago - and it is now just a matter of packing the few remaining items and having our belongings taken into storage (which is already arranged and scheduled). This is another reason I am eating a bit more, to try to use up the food we have in before we move out (as well as the cheese thins I had a nighttime feast of apples and custard).
The situation looks quite good and our stress is alleviated, in that the bungalow is legally and inescapably sold and our immediate future made certain. Of course we still need to buy our new place, but every indication there so far is that difficulties will be few.
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