manic – Enchilada Sunrise

48: Q&A – Experiences with diagnosis

lunamorgan asked “What was diagnosis like? How did you get it all sorted, because from what I’ve heard, it’s really hard to get a proper diagnosis of bipolar, what with most people not seeing doctors during manic phases.”

There were stages to my diagnosis, and it probably didn’t help that I moved from Beverley into Hull a couple of months after I first saw a my GP because I was disconnected and depressed. Well, it did and didn’t help: part of what kicked the depression off was that I wasn’t happy in Beverley, so moving to my new place kind of helped that… but I digress already!

In October 2001, I went to see my GP, ostensibly because I’d strained something in my hand, I think, but also because I was bursting randomly into tears on the train home, feeling completely disconnected from everything, apathetic… all the classic symptoms of depression. My GP was absolutely lovely, very sympathetic, talked me through it all, and prescribed me Prozac. I don’t think he asked any further questions which would have indicated symptoms of mania as well… but if he did, I didn’t answer them correctly because I was depressed at the time, not really clear in the head – and at any rate, I’d never realised that the symptoms of mania I had were a problem. Even the serious hallucinations and paranoia, for some reason. I conveniently forgot about all that once I wasn’t going through it any more.

Anyway, although I felt weird about being diagnosed with clinical depression – unsettled, worried, unsure what it all really meant – I think it helped me just knowing that there was something “real” wrong with me. The Prozac was also somewhat helpful, though it did make me pretty groggy and slow (mentally) a lot of the time. I decided to move out of where I was living and get a place in Hull, nearer my work. Everything was going to be rosy.

Of course, it didn’t quite work out like that. Within a couple of months, I was manic, and not in a good way. I now know that being on the anti-depressants was only helpful while I was depressed. With nothing else to counteract them and keep my mood from going to high, it shot straight past the on-top-of-the-world mania I’d had when I moved, and into hallucination territory again. Really, I guess I was in a mixed state, because I was also freaked out about leaving the house, and I also now now that I tend towards anxiety and agoraphobia when I’m down. Fun times! It all came to a head when I was due for a doctor’s appointment at the GP I’d transferred to, and I was having hallucinations that the buildings around me were moving and changing (rather like in Dark City, only in the daytime and with a tragic lack of Rufus Sewell). This was, I’m sure you understand, frightening and creepy as all hell. I was late to my appointment. The receptionist told me I’d have to go away and make a new one for another day. I went outside… and had an enormous freak out of truely epic proportions. Let’s just say I was a bit hysterical. I got to see the doctor that day after all. I was scaring the other patients. And myself, because I couldn’t stop. I don’t do public displays of extreme emotion, in general. Well, not ones that include hysterical crying and injuring myself. Thankfully, this has been a one off in my life so far!

Anyway, the point is, I saw the doctor, and he referred me to the mental health services and gave me a sick note. It took a couple of months for me to get my first appointment, during which time I was off work and mostly living on my sofa from what I remember. The very first appointmetn I has with the psychiatrist, she diagnosed me with bipolar. I didn’t believe her. I thought she’d just picked it out of a hat because I was creative / musical. I was actually probably displaying clear symptoms of being in a mixed state in that appointment, with hindsight. I was prescribed some anti-psychotics (to help with the mania and anxiety) to take alongside my anti-depressants (which had been changed to Venlafaxine by that time), but they violently disagreed with me breathing, so I only ever took the one dose. Next appointment, she put me on Depakote instead, which I’m on to this day. It took nearly a year, but finally I came to terms with the diagnosis when I started recognising manic episodes. It was knowing what to look for, and also having friends on LJ who were bipolar talking about their experiences which made me see it. One day I went to my appointment and said “I think I’m manic today”. My psychiatrist smiled and agreed.

46: A bit more on “normality”

Following on from my last post, I thought I’d just write a quick one (I hope!) covering what’s “normal” and not when you have bipolar. In my experience, that is.

As I said before, “normal” is when you can function. But in a way, that’s a reasonably wide definition of normal, and you could be in a manic or depressive phase while still meeting the criteria for being normal in that case. If you’re want to define “normal” as “not manic or depressed”, how would you do that? (I would actually call that “stable”, rather than “normal”, probably because normal is such a fuzzy label, but anyway.)

I think perhaps being manic or depressed means that you’re not in control of your moods or emotions any more. You can’t “just snap out of it” or “cheer up” or “calm down”. Your brain chemicals are out of whack, and you’re stuck on that rollercoaster until something happens to stop it. That could be outside intervention (from medication, to therapy, to just someone letting you know that you’re not well – because sometimes you can’t tell yourself ), it could be a sharp mood swing in the other direction, or it could be that you are able to put coping mechanisms in place yourself and start to haul yourself out by your bootstraps. So yes, it is possible to take control back if you catch the mood swing early enough, or at the right point when you’re going back in the other direction. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy helps you do that. The meditation that I spoke about earlier is one of my coping strategies. Getting it out of my head and into paper or screen is another. Knitting and spinning are another. And getting out of the flat and socialising is a very very important one.

Perhaps one of the problems with bipolar is that when you’re manic, it’s very easy to “fake normal”. Everything’s brilliant, you can do anything and everything right now if you’re at the “right” stage of mania. And it feels good. It’s actually harder to admit to mania when everythings awesome like the awesomest thing ever, than it is to admit to depression (which can be pretty hard if you can cope with talking to anyone!).

—————-
Listening to: KT Tunstall – Miniature Disasters
via FoxyTunes

45: Q&A – How do we know what’s “normal” and what’s not?

Ptyx asked me: How do we know what’s “normal” and what’s not?

Before I got started answering that, I thought I’d better make sure I understood what she was asking, since there were a couple of different ways I can see to come at it (How do I know when I’m “normal” instead of in the grip of a manic or depressive phase; or how do we define normal as opposed to not?). When I asked her, she replied: “The question was mostly general, that is, the second option: how can someone tell who is normal, or what behaviour is normal? I think the first option is part of the problem, too. But I guess that, before deciding if someone is behaving normally, we have to decide what is normal and what’s not.”

I think my answer to that will have to run very much along the lines of something my psychiatrist once said to me. To give some background to that conversation, I’d been having what I like to call mild “reality issues” – and yes, I have degrees of reality issues, but when I’ve had the most severe ones, it’s been when I’ve been the most ill – so Mum was concerned that I might be heading in that direction. Which is very bad no good stuff. Anyhow, I’d been having some very vivid, lifelike, repetitive dreams. Repetitive in the sense that I went to the same place every time: what happened wasn’t the same. My sleep was a bit all over the place, so it all seemed a bit dreamlike when I was awake too, so it was making sense to me that both places were equally real. YMMV. However, in general, I was doing OK. I was sleeping every day at some point, I was eating and going out, I was getting other things done. There was just the risk that I might end up going too high. So, I went to see the doctor, and after going through it all with me, he asked if it was distressing me? No, it wasn’t, because the other place was perfectly nice and interesting, just different to here. Was it stopping me from functioning when I was awake – taking care of myself, eating, socialising? Nope.

In that case, he said, it doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about it, just carry on as you were. Make sure you keep taking your meds, keep track of your moods, and if it gets worse: becomes distressing, stops you functioning, makes you do things that are risky to yourself or others; that’s when there needs to be further intervention.

So I think that’s become my definition of “normal”. Able to take care of oneself and function safely and well in society. Does that make sense? I can be manic, I can be depressed, Person X can be a bit eccentric, Person Y can be schizophrenic, and so on, but if we’re all doing well enough that we’re not doing ourselves or anyone else any damage physically or mentally… then that’s “normal” enough for me.

“Normal”, of course, is just as much a label as anything else. And it’s a subjective thing – different people will have different definitions. Often, that definition will be “like me”. That’s too restrictive for me.

Once again, I’ll point you to Cia’s post on the subject – it’s a good one!

—————-
Listening to: Florence And The Machine – Dog Days Are Over
via FoxyTunes

36: Meditation

I’ve just been thinking that maybe I should go and do some meditation to relax my back muscles and refresh my brain a little… and it’s occurred to me that I could also make a quick post about the subject as well!

Until about a year ago, I was very sceptical about both meditation and hypnosis – I particularly didn’t like the idea of giving up control, which is how it felt to me it would be. I suppose I associate that with the horrible out of control feeling I get when mania goes past the getting everything done productive creativity stage, and into the point where I obsess and over-spend and can’t concentrate or control my behaviour. (Mind you, when I’m in the creative manic state I can’t really control my behaviour either, it’s just not destructive: I’m still functional.) Anyhow, the point here is, last year I was having some trouble getting any rest because I was manic, or possibly rapid-cycling (going up up up then crashing, then back up a day later for a few days, slightly higher this time, then crashing… and so on). I had rapid thoughts, I couldn’t stop thinking long enough to sleep or even stay still to rest my body. The guy who was my ‘link person’ at the Hastings Wellbeing Centre suggested meditation. I was doubtful at first, but I was really at the end of my tether. So in the end I dug out a meditation tape that Mum had given me a few years previously. I dug around further and found my walkman(!) and I gave it a try. It took me a couple of goes to stop giggling at some of the imagery used (‘imagine the warm sun is moving nearer, compressing into small ball of light’ made me either imagine I’d been immolated, or that the compression of the sun caused the creation of a black hole into which all life was painfully sucked! I may have been too literal) and get accustomed to letting the words take me along. To calm down enough to make best use of the meditation practice, I guess.

Once I did, it became an enormous help. I got hold of some other meditations, on CD this time, some guided and some just music. I also came across some hypnotherapy recordings, and I gave those a try as well. They’ve been invaluable tools to me ever since, when I need to relax and let go. Sometimes I need them to get to sleep, sometimes I use them if I get tense or jittery in the middle of the day. Sometimes I am still too jittery to be able to concentrate on them, but mostly, they’re a big help. I generally do need the guided ones if I’m a bit manic, as I can’t stop thinking a mile a minute with just music.

I doubt I’m going to need one to get to sleep after the blogathon today, but the one I am planning to use in just a minute is a ‘wake up’ one. Let’s see if it helps!

ETA – I also have a couple for when I’m down: those are hypnotherapy recordings. I’ve found those really useful too.

19: Friends and Family: It’s Not Just All About Me

Finally, my first ‘proper’ post on a bipolar related topic! I’ve taken way too long over writing this… I need to speed up for the others! I’ve chosen this one to start with because it got the highest number of votes in my poll – so really I didn’t choose it at all. I’m not actually all that certain where to start with this subject, but let’s have a crack anyway!

Being Bipolar is something that, like any long-term illness, doesn’t just affect the person with the illness. Pretty much whatever your situation, it has an effect on your family and your friends. Of course, I can only really speak for myself, but in general terms, it can make a difference in how people relate to you, and how you relate and act towards others.

Does having bipolar, a mental illness – one which is gradually becoming more generally known – change the was that people look at you, once they know? Probably. Not always in a negative way, but often enough. I’ve been lucky enough to only have had one really bad experience with a now ex-friend who “couldn’t deal” with the way I was when I was manic. Unfortunately, I didn’t know I was manic, because I was in that stage where everything is brilliant … and annoying as hell to anyone on the receiving end of it, I’m sure. Yet, if this friend had said to me that I was being kind of insane (you know, in a tactful way), I would have realised what was going on – I wasn’t so high that I wouldn’t have recognised it with a little outside help. And in fact that’s what happened a short while after the ex-friend told me where to go, with a nudge from someone else.

Other than that, I’ve been lucky – my friends have been wonderful and very understanding of my illness and the resulting failings as a friend that it brings. I can be somewhat unreliable, for example, if I drop into depression and can’t drag myself out of bed, let alone the house. I can seclude myself for long periods if I’m down, and not talk to anyone for weeks or longer. Or conversely, I can talk a mile a minute and not be able to shut the hell up – that can be amusing, but it can get really annoying. I get annoyed with me! I need friends who aren’t afraid to tell me when I’ve started talking really fast. Luckily, I have people like that, because that stops me getting worse and therefore making things worse for all of us.

As for family, once again I’m really lucky. From conversations with my Mum, I know it was difficult for her and Dad to accept that I had the illness (it was difficult for me, too, but in a different way). She’s told me that she’s felt as if she somehow failed me, maybe by passing on a gene that predisposed me, or by doing something “wrong” in my upbringing. Dad was in a bit of denial for a while, I think (clearly where I get it from!) – neither of them wanted their little girl to have a life long condition like this. Mum of course knows logically that it’s not her fault… but she and Dad wanted to be able to make it magically better, as I guess you do for your children. Mum has come to terms with it now. I think Dad did, but he’s not with us any more so I can’t ask him.

Mum now generally comes with me to my psychiatrist appointments, and she’s done a course for carers and family members that was run locally. Most of the others on the course had family members who were schizophrenic rather than bipolar, but there are plenty of common areas, and she found it very useful. She’s not there at my appointments because I’m not capable of going on my own (well, unless I’m down and freaking out about leaving the flat!) or talking to the psychiatrist. She’s mainly there so that I have a back-up brain in the room – I forget things that happen when I’m in one state or another, sometimes. Or she can let him know how I’ve been when talking to her on the phone, which I do most days even if I’m badly down. In fact, she’s the main person who will point out to me when I’m sounding manic or depressed, and will prod me until I call the CMHT¹ if I don’t get better in a day or so.

The main thing that she’s done is take over supervising my finances. One of my worst problems when I’m manic is over-spending. Obsessively buying every book on the one thing I’ve fixated on, for example (Ooo, cable knitting! Ooo, Stargate! Ooo, shiny things!!). Or spending £800 on sock yarn in 3 months when I didn’t have anything remotely approaching that coming in. This is a pattern that’s been repeating for years, and Mum and Dad had to help me out on more than one occasion. It wasn’t until I was diagnosed with bipolar that I knew why it was happening… but I still couldnt’ stop! So in the end (after the yarn incident), Mum stepped in. She doesn’t manage my money, but it’s a kind of joint effort. I gave her my debit and credit card, and cheque book, and we worked out a strict budget. I only spent cash, or occasionally on the credit card with pre-agreement. Within a year, my enormous overdraft was paid off. There’s no way I could have possibly done that without Mum. Not a chance! These days, my budget is a lot less constrained, and I have my credit card back in my purse. I still speak to Mum first if I’m going to spend on it, but it’s mainly a sort of double-check system, to make sure that I’m not trying to spend out on something silly. It does mean she has extra work to do, keeping an eye on me, and I feel bad about that… but I’m not sure I’d feel confident in having complete control again. Which is weird, because I generally like to be independant. I spose the thing is, when I spend while manic, I feel so horribly out of control. This is stopping that, it’s stopping that stress for me, and it’s stopping eventual stress for Mum.

The other main person affected is my brother. Me being bipolar means that he is the sole executor of Mum’s estate should anything happen to her – not because Mum doesn’t trust me, but because she doesn’t want to put the extra pressure on me in that situation. It means that he has to come and pick me up when we go to Mum’s for dinner every week, because not only can I not afford a car any more, but my driving licence has been medically revoked. (This is also another partial reason why Mum takes me to my psych appointments) He has also become aware that he has to ‘look after’ me a bit sometimes, which is really sweet! For example, we went to see the new Harry Potter film last week, and when we got there it looked like the cinema was going to be pretty full, despite it being 11 in the morning on a Thursday! (We were trying to dodge hordes of kids and foreign exchange students by going to an out of town showing in the morning before the schools broke up!) As it happened, I was absolutely fine in myself, but he thought to ask if I was going to be alright in a crowd. Sometimes I can’t be doing with too many people, you see. He was quite willing to turn around and go home if it would be too much.

So, um, I think that’s about it. If you’ve got any questions or thoughts about this, please leave a comment!

¹ Community Mental Health Team

On different voices

Did you know that people have two (at least) voices? “Chest” voice and “head” voice*. I guess most people only use one most of the time, or don’t notice when they switch from one to the other. Mainly, it’s your chest voice that you use for speech. When you sing, you’re much more likely to leap from one to the other, particularly when there’s a large difference from one pitch to the next. A lot of singing training is to do with getting those different sounds to be consistent with one another. Not to have an obvious bridge moment where you suddenly go into high-squeaky mode or back down into your lower register. If you’ve ever played a wind instrument you’ll know what I mean: it’s much the same thing. It’s got to be smooth and without any odd swoops or jags or squeaks.

Anyway! The point is, right now I have very little chest voice. Speaking is all over the place. There are definitely swoops and jags and squeaks. Unless I deliberately pitch my voice into my head register. Singing, needless to say (particularly since I’m a soprano), is perfectly do-able. Not great-sounding for some things, but do-able. I went to Christingle service at my Mum’s church, and she was most surprised. I’m not going to talk in my head register, though, because it makes me sound about five! I’ll get by – I feel pretty much ok, I just sound croaky.

Huh, that was a sudden swerve into music geeking, wasn’t it? Um. Have a Christingle:

HAPPY CHRISTMAS!!

* This isn’t breath support: that’s another thing. Which comes from the diaphragm and… oh never mind ;-) I’ll shut up!

Crimble Prep!

Hah, only the second day of my resolution, and I nearly forgot to post. Well done, me. And now of course I can’t think of anything to post about, even though I had lots of ideas for things to write about yesterday. Typical!

Maybe I’ll talk about crimble prep… of which I have done absolute none so far, other than writing that list of the people I’m going to get presents for. Therefore, I have Things To Do:

Write christmas card list (e-cards and tangible ones)
Buy cards and stamps (tomorrow).
Write and send out cards of both types.
Work out budget for presents (tomorrow when Mum comes over).
Go present shopping – both online (asap) and IRL (w/ Mum tomorrow, prob also later this week).
Put up tree and decorate.
Knit like there’s no tomorrow (I’m not doing many knitted presents this year, but there are a couple I want to get done).

I think that’s about it… or everything urgent, anyway. Obviously there will need to be present wrapping in there as well. Eventually. Probably on Christmas Eve….

At least this year, I do have a budget to spend on presents. Or a more comfortable one than last year – since Mum has been acting as a sort of overseer to make sure I don’t have any more mania-fueled spending sprees, my finances aren’t so strained. Hooray! In fact, what my budget for Christmas will be is something she’ll help me work out, and knowing that I have agreed amounts for spending really helps me keep to those limits. Yes, I could decide on my own how much to spend, but I’d be bound to go way over the top. If there’s someone else I have to account for that to, it keeps me from going too crazy. There you go, that’s your thrilling life-with-bipolar fact of the day. I can theoretically work out budgets and accounts and whatever with no problem, but practically speaking it all goes out the window as soon as I see something SHINY! And oh yes, that so counts pretty pretty sock yarn. Or any other kind of yarn. Or DVDs, or books, or…. ;-) So since I’m twice as bad with that when buying for others rather than myself, a Christmas budget agreed with Mum is definitely needed to keep me within reasonable limits.

And do you know, because of that I’m rather looking forward to doing the Christmas shopping. :-) It feels so much safer this way… kind of like rock climbing while knowing that you have a harness on and someone belaying you at the bottom. It used to be much more like falling off a very high cliff (possibly while drunk) – complete with the horrible dropping sensation in my stomach! Not that I’ve ever fallen off a cliff, but you know what I mean.

Anyway, I’m not sure why I got onto that, but maybe I’ll write some more about manic spending and so on another time. It’s one of the more common things that happens with bipolar. But now I’m tired and this post is long enough, so I think I’ll be off to bed. Thar be shopping to be done tomorrow, after all!

Where was I?

Both figuratively / mentally and literally…. um…. yes. My train of everything is well and truly lost! Let’s try and get back on track, shall we? This is probably going to be a massively long post, I warn you now! There’s also going to be a fair bit about mental health stuff, so feel free to skim :-)

So, starting from when I vanished back in December… well, for the three weeks leading up to Christmas I was pretty much knitting constantly. So much so that I cramped up my shoulder and ended up with an ouch-y left index finger joint! But eek, I had to get the Christmas knitting done!!! Well, as I already mentioned, I didn’t quite succeed, but I did get Mum’s Fetchings done, and I had a scarf finished that I gave her as well. Also within that time, I went to visit C for the weekend, and having been manic not too long beforehand, I think I ‘overworked’ myself, because once I got home again, I when I wasn’t knitting, I was sleeping. Zzzz!

Then, this site was down from 17th – 26th-ish December because of a server crash. It took the hosting company a while to be able to recreate the accounts and then restore the files. The flat files were about 6 weeks old but the databases were all up to date, so I’ve been able to easily restore the things that were still missing (photos, mainly). So that’s all good. Of course, during that time I had a million posts I wanted to make, and now I don’t remember what they were about ;-)

After Christmas, I crashed like a …. crashed out thing for a good ten days. Everyone tends to, I think, but annoyingly I can’t do anything by halves, so I hit a depressive slump with it: didn’t get up or eat or anything really. I slept, or I read – I got through about 15 books, actually. But mostly I slept. Luckily, I’d arranged with Clara, Ally & co. for them to come over for New Year’s. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have done anything for that… and if I’d been up to phoning them to cancel, I probably would have. But as it happened, Clara rang me and just asked me what time they should turn up. I don’t think she knew I was down, but that really is the best way to deal with me when I’m like that. Don’t leave me room to get out of things! So I pulled myself together, tidied up, and sorted out some nibbles and the like. We had a good time – just a chilled out evening, chatting and playing with little M. :-) After that, I was still down for a few more days, but I started to pull up again at the weekend after C helped me with a plan to get me firing on all cylinders again. Hooray!

Since then, I’ve posted my resolutions, which I’m doing OK with in general, and I’ve started Project 365. Mentally, I’ve cycled into a more manic phase, but overall I’ve been mostly within ‘normal’ parameters. I’ve also done something that I’d been sort of putting off for some time – I’ve gone and registered with the drop-in centre down the road. I think I was resisting it because part of me felt that only people with a “real disability” needed to go to somewhere like that. Or perhaps with a more severe disability than I like to perceive myself having, I don’t know. Ah, denial! I thought I was over you, but no! Anyway, it’s a really nice place, and I can go there as often as I want or need, to use whatever facilities I want to. Mainly, I think it’ll be useful for me to have somewhere to pop in when I know that I’m starting to slide one way or another and need to just be around other people to ground myself, and also it’s good to know that the support and advice services are there if I need them. And I have to admit that it’s a huge plus that it’s literally a minute’s walk (or less) from my front door. They do food too, very reasonably, so if I can’t cook, I can eat there. And I got to chat with three other people with bipolar while I was there, and it’s just kind of nice to have that face to face contact with others in the same boat. So yes. I’m going to keep that up.

Hmm, I think that kind of covers it. I’ve been working away on my WIPs, but I’ll talk more about that in a different post (with progress pics, whee). Oh, and I seem to have my sleeping pattern back to normal, so it’s back to the gym and everything this week as well. I missed Knit & Natter the Saturday before last, but my friend M is coming over tomorrow, and I’m planning to go this coming weekend. Now all I have to do is stick to the plan, but also not overdo it!

Project 365 #1 – Day 1-6: 10th – 15th Jan

I mentioned in my last post that I was thinking about doing Project 365. A couple of days later I decided that if I was going to do it, then I’d better just start before I started thinking about it too much. So I did.

Which means that I will, all going well, be posting a photograph for every day from 10th January 2008 to 9th January 2009. I’m planning to make a post every five days or so. In actual fact, I might post more than one photo for some days – this is to stop myself getting mired in indecision! I’ve set up a specific folder in the photo album for the set of photos to go in, as well. I won’t be putting them on Flickr or adding them to any group sets there, though I have joined the Ravelry group for 365-ers, and I’m intending to join the webring.

Anyway, that’s enough rambling on the theory. On to the photos (click ’em for the full size versions):

Continue reading “Project 365 #1 – Day 1-6: 10th – 15th Jan”

Zooooom

I’ve had THE most awesome final / “reveal” package from my SP11 pal, Janey. THANK YOU JANEY! :-D I shall write more and post pics later. And email Janey to gush a lot. Yes.
Due to Circumstances Beyond My Control, I haven’t been able to send out my own final SP11 parcel to Katie yet. Argh. Actually, it looks like I won’t be able to get hold of one thing I was looking for anyway, so I guess I’ll have to give up and get it sent asap. Although asap might have to be next week, the way things are looking. I reiterate: argh! Sorry, Katie :-/
It’s a year today that I was in that car accident (my car was hit). Therefore, a year since I last drove, since after that (a) my poor car was squished, and (b) I was put on meds that mean I’m medically disqualified from having a licence. Which in turn means I’ve got a free bus pass, so it’s not all bad.
I was kind of under the weather again last week. Mainly, I’m annoyed. I have things to do! Therefore, I’m now running around like a… crazy running around thing. Pick your metaphor. Off to the shops soon. Hey, fresh air! That’ll be novel.
Site revamp still not done. Well, it is. I just haven’t applied it to the actual site and uploaded it yet. Yeah, not done.
What with the not-well thing, I haven’t got as much knitting done as I’d like, either. I do at least have one FO, but everything else that’s Christmas knitting? Um, not yet. Must knit faster.
I have sorted out pretty much everything (I think!) that I’m going to destash, however. Looong post all about that coming v soon.
Xandermog is poking me in the leg with his sharp pointy toes. Owwwww.
Aaaaaaaaaand the child upstairs seems to be banging something echo-y and metal on the floor. Oh, someone please make it stop!
I might just be having a bit of a manic Monday (haha, oh dear). Shall have to watch myself, and try to do some relaxing stuff once I’ve got the must-do things out of the way. Note to self: breathe.