Bipolar Disorder

Bipolar – Preparing to End a Life

/ Robin
Siberia1

Siberia

I’ve been preparing for a while to put my eldest cat to sleep. She has cancer in some huge areas of her body. She’s probably been sick for a long time and I didn’t realize it. She’s very terminal.

I think I’ve been keeping her more comfortable because she’s stopped vomiting every day. I’ve been giving her a shot of steroids every other day to reduce the swelling in her intestines. I had diabetes for a while so I’ve got some experience with giving shots, but not generally to moving targets. I have to pull up that skin between her front legs on her back and make a spot there to give it to her. Sometimes she decides I’ve taken too long and walks off. Frustrating.

Good news – I’ve managed not to stab myself.

I’ve had everyone who cares about her come over and have time with her, Siberia, before her day comes (tomorrow). I wanted everyone to be able to say good-bye and have closure. Honestly, I think it’s giving me more closure than it is anyone else.

My eldest won’t be home from the Air Force till late August and I don’t think I should wait that long just so she can hold her for a few minutes. She understands my decision.

Last week I finally made the decision to do it this week and I scheduled the appointment. They wanted to know if I’ll be sitting with her when they do it.

Let’s talk about stress. Losing a pet due to an unexpected accident is sudden and you have no choice of when or how it happens. This is not like that. Not only is it slow, it’s happening on my schedule and I control the whole situation. It freaks me out. After fighting with Blank the other day and stirring up intense emotional energy there, I’m going to say good-bye to my cat. Then I start moving Friday. Three major stressors in one week… that’s enough thank you.

I don’t think there’s any good way to prepare for death, even if it is of an animal. I’ve tried. We went through it last year with my dad. I’ve tried to give everyone a chance to say good-bye. She looks sick.

As for me, I have to go home afterwards with an empty cat carrier.

I told the girl on the phone that I hadn’t yet decided if I was going to be with her at the time or not. I feel like the right thing to do would be to hold her, but I don’t know if I’m strong enough on my own. If I let them take her away and do it away from me, well, I’m already feeling guilty just thinking about that.

My Mom knows about my indecision. She’s pulled through again and surprised me. She’s offered to meet me here at my house and then go to the vet with us. Then, we can sit with Siberia together. That’s a really nice thing for her to do. She understands because she’s had to put to sleep several of her own family pets. This will be my first time with me taking the animal in myself and being totally responsible for it.

That’s tomorrow. I’ve been preparing by letting her sit with me on the sofa (Siberia, not my Mom), which normally annoys me. She gets all close and licks me and always has to stick out a foot and hook me with one single claw. She’s making it harder because she’s wanting to sit closer and closer every day. And she purrs no matter how she’s feeling. I can give her the shot and she never stops purring.

So to protect myself emotionally as much as I can I have prolonged the issue by letting everyone say their good-byes. I’ve spent extra time sitting with her and talking to her. I’ve taken lots of pictures of her. I’ve waited as long as I could. Tomorrow has to be the day. I’m starting moving all my stuff to the new house this Friday.

Stress.

I could change my mind again, but as of now I’ve decided to hold Siberia tomorrow. My Mom will be there with me helping me be strong. She’s done few things that mean as much as this does to me.

So it will be the vet, Siberia, Mom, me and a chill pill.

Bipolar – Overload and Fury Road

/ Robin

{Warning: drama ahead.}

It’s said by people who know these kind of things that we really can only handle so many major life events at one time, or say, in one years’ time. I’ve passed the recommended daily disaster/stress quota already for this twelve-month period and I’m scheduling more for the near future. I’m maxed out. Friday night, I lost control.

Last year my father passed away after a horrible 6-month sudden fight with cancer including it spreading to his brain. It changed him at the end. It was horrifying. Add a few more major stressors and we come to Friday night when I lost my shit having been provoked by my son’s first girlfriend who is 21 years old. It could have happened at any time, but she pushed my last button and my “lose my shit” gun was locked and loaded. Then the little female of the species told me in a text that I would “NOT” be seeing my son Saturday. She had the nerve to shout at me! (Never shout in a text – use all caps.)

I’ll come clean and just say that I don’t like this girl. Like all good mom’s, I think she doesn’t measure up to what I believe my son deserves. I could give you a rundown of all the things that in my mind disqualify her as suitable for him, but that’s not what I’m blogging about at the moment.

Some of the stressors recently have included looking for a house for me in a market that is pretty much closed. We’re 45 min south of Seattle. Nuff said. There is no housing available and if you find it, it isn’t cheap. We’ve had a rough time finding a place, but we finally did.

Four days ago I scheduled to have my eldest cat put to everlasting sleep on this coming Tuesday. She too has cancer. She’s terminal and after seeing the cancer in an amazing ultrasound that her vet allowed me to sit in on, I agree that it is obvious that she’s got no hope. It’s very possible she’s in pain.

They wanted to know if I want to hold her. I feel like how can I not? But, how can I? My Mom offered to go sit with me. I said yes. So I’ll hold her when she takes her last breath. I’ll be responsible for that, for putting down a cat that seems as friendly and loving as ever. Okay, maybe she’s more friendly than before. She sits as close to my butt on the sofa that she can and as long as she can. I feel bad, but it annoys me after a while. I don’t like to be crowded. So, I feel guilt. My kids have known her, Siberia, most of their lives. She’s 12 and my youngest is 18. That’s happening Tuesday.

Friday, if all goes as planned, we get the keys to the new house and begin moving my things in. We need the keys for Friday but apparently that might not happen. Stress. The kids have taken the day off specifically because I was told we’d have the keys that day. OMG. We’ll be taking the really breakable things and things like the big TV that doesn’t have a box anymore. I’d like to get a lot moved that first day. I’m going to be depending on my kids heavily.

Sydney, my youngest daughter, is going to paint my bedroom for me. I’m thrilled! I’ve chosen purples! I’m going bold.

If, things go as I’ve planned them (and in the real world they rarely do), Kyle will have my brother’s work van and we’ll start moving small stuff and what not and Syd will start painting. Kyle was here doing a run to the dump with a bunch of furniture I wanted to get rid of for a few hours. He was 4 hours late and couldn’t come back to help with the things I can’t reach… which was the plan… after he went to the dump because he had to go get his girlfriend from work.

Sydney had called me at 9:00 a.m. (Friday) and bowed out because her doggie has a hurt paw and she needs to keep her from licking it. Terrific. Friday wasn’t so smooth. I asked Kyle if he was still coming over to help Saturday, yesterday. He said he and Blank, his live-in girlfriend of 3 months wanted to do some things so he couldn’t be here. I thought we had already agreed he’d be here on all his days off at least part of the time to pack. (I am going through the stuff that has followed me through ten years of a failed marriage and 30 years of living with junk I haven’t even seen some of. In my case, my bipolar has made it hard for me to let go…. That’s for another day.)

Okay, Blank (the girlfriend), I taught my kids that family always comes first. I have deadlines that I can’t put off. My emotional wellbeing and a lot of money are tied up in what happens in the next week or so. She demanded that he be with her Saturday to do a few things. He takes her to work, picks her up after work, spends all evening with her, spends all his off work hours with her and yet she feels neglected. True he’s been helping me packing the last three weeks maybe one day a week and spending time with Siberia before she’s gone for good. He has Fridays off. He takes her to work, then comes to help me, then goes to pick her up from work and goes home. How is that taking him away from her?

Where does a 21-year-old girl, who doesn’t know me or anything about me, get off talking to me the way she did? You’ll just have to take my word for it. She was disrespectful and spoke to me like I was a child. She shouted at me in a text that “he would NOT be helping me.” Who the hell does she think she is?

Why isn’t my son standing up for me? Why isn’t he explaining things to her? It’s his first girlfriend, I know that. But she shoved her control of him in my face and that was the end of it. Oh, she’s offered to come over with him AFTER he gets off work today. Terrific. I’ve never liked her. I think she dresses like a slob and is a ditz. She gets herself so worked up over doing homework that she doesn’t do it. Then she insists on Kyle stay with her when she finally does it, when it’s late. She gets depressed all the time and leans on my son to hold her up. The longer I know her the more I see her using him.

I pride myself on the fact that I don’t gossip about and with family members. This is the first time I’ve had reason to. Last night I texted with Blank’s cousin and Kyle’s best friend about her. I was really looking for muscle to help move my TV, but we got off topic and talked about them. He’s worried about Kyle too.

I haven’t been invited to Kyle and Blank’s house once since he moved in with her. I haven’t been invited to meet them at the park to walk the dogs and get to know each other. I’ve done the inviting. I know, she’s just a child, 21. She’s a female sharing a bed with my son. She’s no child.

I had called and asked if she would like to come over yesterday with Kyle to help me. She was walking her dog and said she’d call me back. She didn’t. Later I got a text from her explaining that she has control over Kyle, not me. Oh hell no. I called her and I went off. Fury unleashed.

I haven’t been this angry since Sydney lied to me about dating her now fiancée last year. I don’t even know this girl but the fury I felt was real. I wanted to immerse her in all the pain and stress I’m feeling right now and drown her in it… let her see how it feels.

Oh and that’s not all. I start, hopefully, moving Friday, right? The movers are coming to get the majority of the stuff on Monday. I’m hoping to be fully moved out by the end of Monday. Then August 7th I fly to Tampa to drive my eldest daughter Jessica (leaving the Air Force) and her two cats across the country to here, home.

I have no small amount of stress in my head. I don’t need a clueless child getting the cogs in my rickety machine tangled up and destroying the sensitive state that I’m perched in. And I go back to school in the fall. That’s super stressful for me. This time Kyle won’t be around to ground me. It will all be on me.

So after I unleashed my ineffective fury on Blank, I called Sydney so I could try to calm down. As usual she didn’t react the way I expected her to. She told me basically that she couldn’t believe that her powerful mom, who despite all the odds being against her, kept her kids and raised them and did it really well. She said that despite my Bipolar and other issues I kept them and their dad didn’t get to raise them. She was angry with me for letting someone who should have no power over me, have power over me like that. Where was the powerful woman she knew her mom was at? I got my ass handed to me.

It took me hours to go to sleep and then I over slept.

Hopefully the fury is now in remission. I fear the overload is not. I’ll have to be more careful. Stay on top of taking my meds and going to my appointments. I should tell my new counselor about the fury I suppose. I stopped walking Bailey when it started raining again a few weeks ago. Today was one of the few days we’ve been out. It was muggy.

I don’t know how Bailey did it, but she spotted something gross on the side of the highway and rolled in it without breaking stride. So gross.

So yeah, overload and fury road. I am so mindful of the overload. I feel the fury sticking inside me like my dog eating peanut butter. I’ve got to control myself.

I have no intention of apologizing to Blank today. I have nothing to apologize for. I suppose I could apologize for yelling, but she was yelling too. Little bitch. You don’t get to mess with my family. (Obviously there is a lot more to things than I’m saying here. This is just to give you an idea of how I’m doing.)

I think it’s time for me to have a private talk with Kyle about the differences between family and a girlfriend. The major difference to me is that when everyone walks away from you in the most desperate moments of your life, your family still has your back, still believes in you, still loves you. Family is always what you have left when all the others have gone. That’s how I raised him. The four of us, we are family. Jessica, Kyle, Sydney and I. Unbreakable.

Overload and fury road. Don’t mess with me Blank. I’ve got stuff going on and you don’t want to be the one the fury road dead ends at, especially now that I’ve had time to think things over and not just react emotionally, which is what I did.

I still feel the residue of Friday night’s fury. I feel it settling into my intellectual side, ready to spring into action in a more reasonable way. I’m not going to have a shouting match with a child. She’ll be respectful to me if she comes over with him today, or she’ll be invited to leave.

I’m so angry with her that I called my Mom, whom I sometimes fight with, and explained the situation to her. Kyle has also started caring less about his appearance since he moved in with her. He needs to care because he works with the public every day at work. He’s also started using credit now that he lives with her. He never even had a credit card until he moved in with Blank. Now he’s just bought the $800 Samsung S7 active. He was using a free texting phone and was proud of it before her. Now he owes on the phone, furniture and other things. He doesn’t even have a full-time job. When he lived here he never used credit. I know he has to live his own life and make his own mistakes. I’m not fine with that, but I accept it.

My family didn’t approve of my ex-husband. No one said anything to me about it. Taking the kids out of the equation, marrying him ruined my life. Would I have listened if my family had tried to talk to me about how they felt and what they saw before I married my ex? I don’t know for sure, but there’s a chance it might have. I’m going to give Kyle that chance. He’s too new at relationships to just let him be pulled about by a user. Blank is a user of other people. Also, she too has mental health issues. That alone makes me afraid for him. He deserves to live with a healthy partner. Not that a mental illness means it wouldn’t work, but look, I’m who he’s been living with. I don’t want him to have to keep dealing with issues like I have. He deserves freedom and joy.

She may come over with Kyle today when he comes over after work to help pack. I can’t reach the areas I need him to pack. All us females are under 5’5” and we need his long arms and legs. If she does I will not apologize for our phone call. I have nothing to apologize for. I will be polite. Beyond that, we’ll have to see.

Honey, the name the kids all call my Mom, is thinking she’ll “happen” to swing by while he’s here to check out how he’s doing. I think she’s going to scope out his hygiene. Since he’s moved in with her he isn’t showering everyday like he was. He gets greasy fast so that’s bad. Sydney, who works for the same company as Kyle does, says he looks bad at work. She says his cloths are sloppy and look old and like they fit someone else. She says he’s failed his last three secret shoppers. That’s grounds to be fired. When he still lived here he got several bonuses from the secret shoppers, not fails.

Maybe I’m focusing on Blank because I’m putting Siberia down on Tuesday. Maybe it’s the move or the idea of driving across the country that is making me sensitive to her. Maybe.

I’ll tell you this for certain. No one messes with my kids whether they’re adults or not.

I’ve always been honest with my kids. I see no reason to stop being honest with them now. The truth is, Blank provokes me to anger with the way she interacts with me and keeps my son from seeing me. I’ve heard the way she talks about the aunt she was living with for two years before the aunt kicked her out. She’s vicious. She interprets things to her advantage and then gets Kyle to agree with her….

Okay, I’ve vented in extreme here. I don’t recall doing this like this before. Well, it is a blog about my life and stress is a huge part of my life right now and she’s causing some of it. It’s time for me to recognize that I don’t have to let her get me upset and I don’t have to worry that I have to protect my son from her. I have to have faith that the good job I did raising him and his own personality and intelligence are enough to take care of himself.

Why did he have to sign a year-long lease? Sigh….

Bipolar – Learning How to Behave

/ Robin

Learning how to behave… I know that title might seem a bit odd or offensive, but hear me out. I grew up manifesting symptoms of Bipolar Disorder. My father may have been an undiagnosed bipolar person. Whatever he was he had the temper and anger of a demon. Between myself and with my father as an example I learned how to behave very badly. Somehow my Mom managed to teach me some good manners and I could put my polite hat on when I needed to, but much of the time I was just angry and depressed and it came out in my behavior and my attitude.

I behaved badly especially at home. In high school I wanted to be included in things but was too scared to. In college I got involved an everything I could. I’m not sure where that came from. I went to a Bible College and I behaved like I belonged there. When I graduated and left, the façade faded away and again I was that violently angry person inside. Unfortunately, I wasn’t polite or respectful especially to my family.

Now that I’m well medicated, am pretty healthy and have been in therapy for years I can look at myself and my current behavior and be more or less objective and honest with myself about my behavior. I’ve learned that I sometimes still struggle with in being courteous, being tactful, using the correct tone of voice, smiling, and having the appropriate facial expressions. Strange list, don’t you think? When I thought about what to write today I realized that these are things that directly impact how my Mom and I get along. She’s coming over today to help me pack my things for my move. I always try to prepare myself and think about how I’m going to act when I’m spending time with family because they are the ones I tend to act the most inappropriately with.

Courtesy – Dictionary.com begins its definitions of courtesy with the following two entries:

  1. excellence of manners or social conduct; polite behavior
  2. a courteous, respectful, or considerate act or expression.

Courtesy is nothing more than controlling my selfishness in all situations. It is respecting other people’s feelings. It is not, as I was prone to do, blurting out what I feel in my bipolar moments. It requires self-control. It is not always easy, especially when I am angry. Courtesy also requires self-awareness. It becomes more possible the more I have a positive attitude and it reflects quality of my goals and passions. The more I devote myself to those the more my behavior moves in line with their essential quality.

Tact – There is a right time for everything and a wrong time for everything. In this case I’m talking about my historical behavior of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. Today I will be testing myself on whether or not I’m able to be courteous and speak with tact while spending time with my long-suffering Mom. I have been known to speak out of turn, speak in antagonistic tones, and interrupt her when she is speaking. I have been known to regularly question the soundness of her opinions and comment on any mistake she might make in texting or speaking.

While I am doing well I have no excuse to continue to behave in this manner. I’ve put in a lot of work on myself and this is a simple test for how good I’m doing. Can I keep my mouth shut unless I’m going to say something nice to her today?

Tone of Voice – There is something that we use to express our personality every time we speak and that is our tone of voice. If we say one thing, but our tone of voice says something different, we will be conveying something other than what we might intend to say. When I speak with my mother and I’m behaving badly my tone of voice is the first place it is evident. If I say something to her in a disrespectful tone of voice, but say something I think is respectful you can bet she won’t think I’m being respectful. She’ll probably be hurt that her daughter is speaking to her in such an unloving manner. Bipolar Disorder is not naturally conducive to good behavior.

Smiling – Smiling is much the same as tone of voice. In fact, if you are smiling when you say something it will be heard in what you say. When I’m feeling stressed out and angry it is very difficult to smile. But smiling is something I can control and I can do even when I don’t feel like I can say anything polite. My objective with my Mom today is to smile and be respectful and thankful that she’s taking time to help me. I don’t deserve the help. She’s doing it because she loves me. She still loves me after all the long years of bad behavior on my part.

Facial Expressions – Smiling is obviously one of the facial expressions I’ll want to use if I want to improve my relations with my Mom and other people. I can’t count how many times I’ve gotten into fights because of someone’s facial expression and what I perceive as their tone of voice. I react to facial expressions even if words are absent. Worse, I don’t control my own facial expressions.

If I really appreciate my Mom’s help today, my smile should reach to my eyes and be evident in my tone of voice. I should be tactful and not insult her if we don’t understand what the other is saying. I should be polite and respectful.

Sometimes I have to take a step back and examine my behavior to see if it lines up with who I’m trying to make myself to be or if it is more along the lines of the behavior I’ve tried so hard to leave behind.

I have no delusions that I will behave appropriately in all situations. I’m still human and I still have a mood disorder. It can be hard or impossible to smile when you are really on the down side of darkness. It’s okay.

Do the things you need to do to be healthly and stable again. When you cycle back up you will still have this knowledge you have gained about yourself and how to interact with your world. Take your meds as prescribed, go see your counselor when you’re supposed to, see your doctor if you need to, reach out to others who know who you are and you can trust to support you, exercise and eat healthy meals. If it seems like you’re just going through the motions that’s okay. Those motions may just bring you back to a happier place sooner and bring joy to your life.

Today, I will behave.

{Later} It was a good day. I only snarled once.

Bipolar – Pleasing Personality

/ Robin / 1 Comment

As I look back over the last week I see several days where I had less than a pleasing personality. I wasn’t fun to be around. I guess getting ready to move and all the packing and coordinating is weighing heavily on me and I’m letting it change how I interact with people. I’m allowing it to change me in negative ways. I wasn’t keeping an eye on myself. I should have known that I needed to be careful.

I’ve worked so hard over the years to become someone I like. I like myself a whole lot more now than I did even a year ago, but it’s easy to slide back into the familiar crappy personality I the whole time my bipolar symptoms had free reign with me I wasn’t someone people wanted to know.

I should get a tattoo that says, “Daily, proceed with caution.” That way I’ll remember not to take myself for granted and let a mood swing, even a small one, affect my personality and turn me into a person no one wants to be around.

Twice I took the bipolar bait and let potential negative situations explode into fights with family members. I was surprised with how easily I started becoming the person I was for most of my life. I don’t want to lose the better “me”.

Let me give you an example. I didn’t just argue with my Mom, I fought with her. Neither of us was listening to the other and both were convinced the other was wrong.

My Mom and I fought over money. She supports me financially because I can’t work. I get some money from SSI because I’m officially disabled, but it doesn’t even cover my rent so I really shouldn’t fight with her. Morally, I should show her respect. Etiquette dictates that I be respectful to my mother.

I need to work especially hard to have my mood swings well away from my Mom. We lost my Dad just over a year ago and she’s still grieving. She doesn’t need me coming in and making her feel the way she does when we fight. I know it hurts her. She doesn’t explain things well so when she says something and I react to it as though that’s what she really meant to communicate to me we almost always fight.

I should really be asking her what she means. As I told my kids growing up, “ask good questions.” I will start asking her good questions to make sure I really understand what she means. I’ve been saving money since last September because I figured I’d be moving sometime in the near future. Now it’s July the next year and I’m moving. I’ve got enough money saved to buy a piece of furniture, new towels, flatware, a book case and things like that. Oh and I got a new toaster. She freaked out because although I reassure her I have enough money to buy these things she worries and expects that she’ll end up paying for them because that’s the way things have always been in the past.

I’ve always relied on her to bail me out financially. I didn’t go out and buy things I didn’t need, but she couldn’t see that. She just saw $$$ and doesn’t really trust me yet. I don’t blame her.

I’ve kept how much money I have saved private because I didn’t want her trying to make me spend it on paying for the movers or house cleaners. Maybe I should pay for them, but I’m not going to and I’ve explained why to her. I want my own things when I move into my own house. Everything I have is from her. She uses things, gets tired of them, and gives them to me. I don’t even have bath towels that I bought for myself. I’m 53 and I’m still getting hand-me-downs.

Yes, I’m thankful she’s taking care of my needs, but just this once I want to buy somethings for myself. She says she understands that, but I think she still thinks I’ll spend recklessly because that’s what I’ve always done in the past. I’m not going to do that. I’m paying for things as I go so I won’t overspend. I hope I’ll earn her trust as we go through this situation.

I’ve probably told you more than you want to know about the situation, but I have a good reason for that. As painful as it is to admit to anyone but myself that I let myself out of control and let my swinging moods overrun me, I’m admitting it now. I wasn’t careful and I let my mood change who I was.

I was acting like I used to act when we fought all the time. I really don’t want to blow all the hard work I’ve done or our relationship just because of some stress over moving. It was stupid really. I was just being stubborn and didn’t want to tell her how much money I have. To me it’s the only thing that’s really mine, I felt that she didn’t need to know how much money I’ve saved. I believed it wasn’t her business.

I finally reassured her things would be fine, but I did have to tell her how much money I’ve saved up. I told her I have enough to buy the things I’d showed her I was buying.

You know I did try to not fight about it. I sent her links to what I wanted to buy and asked her what she thought. I don’t know that she saw anything but the price. I think we’ve come to an understanding. I feel like my personality is intact again. There are so many things that affect our personalities. I think we all want people to like us. The way I was behaving wasn’t doing that.

Today I have been reflecting on losing my temper during the week. I think I’ve spotted what the triggers were. Now I’m more prepared for the next time my moods poke me and try to make me behave badly. I’m committed to having a pleasing personality. After all, I figure I’m more likely to be successful if people like me, and don’t try to avoid my bitchy ass.

My quest for reaching my goals and following my passions are back on track. Everything impacts these things. I’m not going to give up my dreams because my moods are swinging. I respect my moods and their swings, but I’m determined to live my life with positive passion.

Having a pleasing personality will move me towards my objectives. I’m committed to developing it.

Bipolar and Adaptation

/ Robin

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From today through about August 18th I need to be able to be my best self. That means I will have to be super vigilant and sensitive towards my Bipolar Disorder symptoms. Theoretically, that’s how I’m supposed to be all the time, but right now it’s really evident that I have to pay attention. The stress of looking for a house has rolled over to moving and that will roll over into flying out to Florida to meet my daughter and driving across the country with her two cats to bring her home.

I must prepare myself physically, mentally for what’s next. I tend to react to situations and my moods swing without my even being aware of what’s happening, that is, until I’m done reacting.

This is going to be a good experience for me to practice adapting myself quickly to changing situations and emergencies without losing my temper like I’ve done in the past. My usual reactions are an abrupt swinging of mood, or panic and then the mood swing.

This skill, the skill of flexibility and adaptability, is an important skill to have while coping with our mental illness. Each new skill I learn builds upon the base of my positive mental attitude, my chief definite aim, or my passion in life. (I tend to think of the three things as different ways of saying the same thing.)

Having a flexible disposition means I must be able to quickly adapt to my environment. When I say “environment” I mean not only the physical situation, but also dealing with the people involved in the situation. It means that I can harmonize with my environment in a flexible way.

I’m not suggesting that I ignore my principles or altering my goals. I’m simply suggesting that I recognize my mental attitude towards the situation and determine if the situation is a disaster or a windfall. If it is a disaster I have the opportunity to change things and make them better. Because I use positive mental attitude, I have an even better opportunity to change the disaster into a boon.

I think that part of being adaptable means that in every situation with every person I try to understand their needs and demands. An example would be my Mother calling me a couple times a day and telling me something else I need to do to prepare to move. Yesterday it was that I should go to the Loews and Home Depot on Meridian to purchase boxes, start packing, have the kids (my son, 21 and youngest daughter, 19) come over and help me go through things, and to get rid of the piano. Being sensitive to her and to protective of myself I suggested that she make a list. We’ll see if she can do it. I eventually did go to those stores and bought boxes, but not the ones on Meridian. I hate driving on that street. It’s too busy and too long and too slow.

My plan includes to getting up at the same time every day, feed the animals and take my meds, eat healthy foods, exercise (I walk down the highway with Bailey), give my brain a break by reading or watching TV or listening to an audio book while walking, planning and making lists, keeping appointments or doing errands, spending time learning about how to be successful, spend time doing reactional activities, and so on. I need to keep things fairly structured. When I just watch TV all day it usually takes me another day or more to get back on track.

I’m going choosing to daily be flexible, adaptable, and let me just add: I’m going to be kind to others. (Ellen DeGeneres)