Proud!

Today it is therapy day again. I'm in the train on my way to Maastricht Randwyck and I think today will be a good session. I am proud of what I accomplished these last weeks. Even if there is still a lot I could have done better (this little devil on my shoulder is always pointing out what I do wrong). I am sad that I have to mention my protocol is still not sent in because I need another approval if the chief of the department of rehabilitation in the hospital. If he does not answer soon I'll send in my protocol though, just can't wait forever.

The thesis-writing is coming along nicely, I am satisfied with what I did so far and although there is a lot more work to do, I am on the right track right now. I hope I can keep it up!

As far as my creativity goes, I just took some pics of some clothes I recently finished. One is the neon yellow skirt, the neon is kind of hard to see with the wrong lighting though. The other one is a zebra dress with neon orange bows.

I also finally managed to finish the first sock I ever knitted, so of course I need to add a pic of that too!

On Tuesday I couldn't resist any longer and so I sent not-my-Finn a message. He did not check his email yet but I hope he will soon and most of all I hope he answers. I miss him so much. The last two nights I couldn't sleep because I kept thinking of him. I am such an idiot.

I Can Do It!

Yeah! Yesterday I worked hard on my research protocol again, just to do the finishing touch. All lay out stuff is now done, spelling check is done, I read the website of the medical ethical committee and e-mailed one of the people who work there to ask if there was anything else I needed to hand it except for the actual protocol and letters, patient information (all the stuff I wrote). Did not get an answer yet, but as soon as I know it's all complete I will send it in after letting my mentor sign all the stuff. I have to send it by snailmail anyway so it is easier to go to Maastricht for that instead, will be faster to bring it to her, let it sign and then bring it to the METC.

So today I had sort of a day off since all is done for now (well, I have to actually start writing my thesis but I thought I could have a day off before I start that). I walked to the building where they drew my blood for the tests they are going to do to see if my muscle tiredness has something to do with missing minerals/vitamins. I can call them in five working days for the answer, so that will be next Wednesday. I am curious if anything will show up.

The walk was nice, snow everywhere and the sun was shining very brightly. I wished I brought my sunglasses but in the end it was just nice to feel the sun on my skin. It is very cold though, the coldest it has ever been in March apparently. Very cold for Dutch people at least, it's of course nothing compared to Finnish cold.

Back home I finished the back part of my sister's sweater and continued with the sleeves. Getting closer to the end now and I am happy about it, I want to try something new with the socks and this is just really boring to knit. I really hope she likes it though!

Yesterday in the afternoon I continued working on my neon yellow summer skirt (it's covered with black lace, don't worry) and I am glad to say it is also almost done. I had some inspiration for my Lizzy Borden shirt so I would love it if I can go and work on that one soon. Which reminds me I have to go to the market place tomorrow to buy some red stretchy fabric and not forget to also buy some metal rings for the skirt. The skirt only needs to be decorated a bit now, still quite a lot of work but the end is in sight.

Still no news from not-my-Finn and I want to write him, but I decided that I will wait until I sent in the protocol because that is really something to tell and something I am proud of when it happens, so I want to share it with him. He has been quite supportive with my studies so he'd probably like to hear how it is going. I am really wondering what he is doing now. Still working on the album or working on the video clip maybe. I remember him telling me he was checking out video clips from many artists to get some ideas and get inspired for their videoclip. I wonder which song will be the chosen one for the first single.

I've been downloading old sci-fi and fantasy movies lately and watched The Dark Crystal yesterday and today Flash Gordon. Both fun to watch. I also watched some really old Rutger Hauer movies and I especially liked him in Turks Fruit (Turkish Delight). He is acting very well in that one I think. Also saw Spetters and Soldaat van Oranje (Soldier of Orange). Still the one that impressed me most is Turks Fruit, just because of his character in there and how he matches with the girl, they really seemed to be so in love. I remember wishing I had a great love like that, it lifts you up and makes you forget all your responsibilities (not always good) and nothing in the world can get you down.

After I've gone to the market tomorrow I will have to look into the mirror again and tell myself I can do it. It really worked wonders and I need to start writing my thesis because I want to go to Finland so badly. I need to finish this thesis as fast as I can so I can hopefully spend the summer there. Getting kind of late already. I think it is time for me to go watch some bad tv show in bed and go to sleep early.

Happy Birthday!

One of my good friends celebrates her birthday today and since she reads my blog sometimes, I want to surprise her with a birthday wish. So, if you read this: happy birthday and I hope you have a wonderful day! We'll meet again soon, can't wait!

Yesterday I told myself: tomorrow will be the day. And it was! I told myself when I got up that I could do it. I kept repeating it to myself, stared at myself in the mirror and said it a few times more in Dutch, in English and my own dialect Limburgs. Somehow I still feel like I am always living in a dreamworld and I couldn't really see myself being completely sincere saying it, but then again I don't know how sincere I normally look...I just never feel like I am completely alive. Nothing feels real. Well, except for the pain when I think of not-my-Finn and how I miss him. And when we were together I finally felt completely alive and feeling again. Wonderful how a person can do that to you. Even if love is unanswered, it can still be something very special that you think of with happiness. And melancholy...those days in Helsinki were so full of good moments, good talks about things we think are important in life. I loved that he confided in me so much, although I knew he was still holding back and just lifted a tip of the veil on the last evening. I wonder what happened to him. I know so little and I just wish I could hold him, comfort him and tell him all will be alright and it won't stay like this forever. But maybe he likes it like this, because it is safer not to experience emotions. Still I have a bit of a brake on my emotions because of my meds and I am really looking forward to the day when I am finally done with them, when I can finally experience emotions to the fullest again and enjoy things so much better. For now, working on my university stuff, I think the meds are better, because I know I would have panic attacks every night again. But I can't wait to really feel again!

Speaking of dreaming, I had the most amazing sci-fi dream about a week ago. I can barely remember what happened, but it had something to do with the world being so completely polluted that people were sent to another world. This other world we reached through being beamed up through some narrow tube with flashy lights surrounding it. I remember that I was there with some good friends and my parents and that we had to try to get on the same beam or close to each other in time, I didn't know why, but it was kind of stressy. So I got beamed up with one of my Finnish friends, more I don't remember. We stayed on this other plate or world for a few months/years? I don't know exactly but it wasn't that long.
When we got beamed (or shot, haha, reversed beam) back, the world was completely healed again and we could start living anew there. Back with my friends and family on the same planet, all apparently survived the travels. Oh and the funny thing was, when we got back on planet Earth, I discovered that many, many more years had gone by. Apparently we were in a place where time went by differently and so it was over 120 years later (someone told me in my dream, but thinking of it, it must have been many more hundreds of years of course). When I woke up, I realized that this was the reason why we had to try and get on the same beam, because of the difference in how time went by. It could have been that we would have arrived in a completely different time, and mostly when traveling back, we could have been years apart from one another if there was even an hour between the travel back. Oh my, I am really overthinking this...

Last night I dreamt about spending a few days and nights with the band on some sort of camp (we stayed in a building though). Don't remember much, just little flashes and that the drummer was so nice to me. I don't recall seeing much of the singer though, where the hell was she??? I remember that I shared a mattress with not-my-Finn and this overwhelming feeling of being safe with him. And he was gone a lot but his band mates were very nice to me. Yeah, keep on dreaming lady, stuff like this does not really happen. Most of the times at least. And since I already was lucky once, I guess there's nothing in there anymore for me.

Back to today! After telling myself so many times that I can do it, I started working on my research protocol and just worked on every little detail, even too many spaces between the words and stuff like that. I worked really hard, gave myself a break after an hour to have some breakfast and relax a little. Then worked on in the afternoon and almost finished everything. Now all I need to do is send everything to my pc upstairs so I can change the files back to Word-documents and see if the layout is still intact, change it where it needs adjustments. Then write the accompanying letter to send it in. And then write to my mentor who's probably back from where she went to for the last two weeks. I need her autograph and one from the head of the department of rehabilitation, since he is the sponsor. That will be everything. And print everything of course...probably more to think of tomorrow but this is the stuff that is most important. I want everything to be (almost) perfect so it won't come back to me because it is incomplete.

One more thing I forgot: my sister had her birthday, and I sent her a text at 12 to congratulate her, even added some Finnish there haha. In the evening I received a text which sounded a bit weird, asking me if I was still away from home (yes, on Thursday I was away but it was only for a day). So I answered I wish I was away, referring to Helsinki of course. She then called me, crying. The day had started out pretty nice, but then she got into a fight again with her boyfriend and now he left her all alone on her birthday and was busy hiding away in the attic. She was so sad and crying and I felt so bad for not being able to just come I Ed and hug her or drag her out of the home to celebrate and distract her. So I tried with little jokes and trying to make her see that she is better off without him. She knows, she is just not ready. This mental abuse has been going on for years. He always blames her for everything, although she is the sweetest girl. She gets more and more insecure and too afraid to kick him out of her home, because she fears she will never find another guy and she will stay alone forever. I told her it's easy to find a new guy, there are plenty. But she still loves him, even though he hurts her more than she is happy with him. He always tells her she has to change because he cannot stand her like she is and she is doing everything wrong, making mistakes all the time and annoying him. I just cannot believe how she can take this for so many years. But I guess that is always the case with mental (or psychological?) abuse. People think they're not worth it and the person a using them is some sort of god. Well at least she doesn't think he does nothing wrong. In fact, I think she is finally getting there, slowly. She finally starts to realize things won't change and things won't get better. I just hope she won't get hurt so much anymore, and won't be permanently damaged by her boyfriend's behavior.

So, time for me to go to sleep. I only slept 7 hours last night, which is really not enough lately, but somehow I couldn't really fall asleep that easy. Then it started nagging me that I wanted to write something and now it's almost an hour later...Goooood Niiiiiight!

Missing Someone

Gosh, I miss him. The guy who is not my guy. I wonder if it will ever work out. I started remembering more of the conversations we had and I cannot shake the images of him looking at me, and of his perfectness. Of course he is not perfect. It is just my pink glasses of love, but I know he would be perfect for me, so kind, so gentle and well-mannered. As a kind of tribute or whatever you might call it, I downloaded (shame on me!) a few bad sci-fi/fantasy movies from the eighties and I'm kind of curious about them. Most of them I heard of but never watched. I just wish we could discover them all together.

So the last few days I have been sleeping a lot, still terribly tired. Yesterday I fell asleep by mistake, actually I wanted to just rest for a few minutes, because my therapist had advised me to do so instead of sleeping so much (I always feel crappy after falling asleep during the day). The resting turned into 3,5 hours of sleeping. Luckily I was apparently so tired I could still sleep very well during the night.

Apart from sleeping I have been wanting to finish my work for the research protocol since I finally can, but somehow I cannot get myself to actually do it. I feel so tired all the time I cannot get myself to do anything useful. I did do a lot of knitting since I wanted to make a nice sweater for my sister's birthday. It's not finished yet, but since I won't see her today, on her actual birthday, there's no harm done.

I also found a knitting pattern for socks online so I decided to give those a try as well. And I am still halfway through knitting a hat for my friend. So lots of projects I cannot seem to get finished.

At sewing class I worked on a summer skirt and a summer top. The top is done, except for the part I need to do in class since I cannot do this at home with my sewing machine. But that will only take a few minutes. The summer skirt I've been wanting to make for a year now and last time I was about to finish the waistband, the zipper broke and I had to start all over again with that part. So this Friday in class I bought a new zipper and I can soon start working on that one. If only my body did not feel so tired so that I could sit up without feeling like I just walked a marathon.

I went to the doctor on Friday morning, since my therapist adviced me to go and ask her about my muscles feeling so tired all the time. She thought I might be having too low levels of natrium, or maybe something with vitamin B12. The rest of the options I forgot but I tomorrow I can go to check my blood. I hope there's nothing wrong, that it is just a side-effect of the medication like my doctor suggested. She said there's nothing written about side-effects with muscle tiredness, but it could be some sort of muscle soreness, like I worked out too hard or something (from the medication, not from actually working out too hard).

I asked my doctor to also check out my right breast since there's been this annoying part in there that is a bit harder. It doesn't feel like anything bad, but I just wanted to make sure, since I had some things wrong with my breasts years ago. So she checked them out and all was okay she said. So that's a relief. Although I was almost sure it was okay, you always have this little voice inside your head telling you it might be wrong.

Now, I hope next week will be my week of happiness, in which I won't be tired anymore and I can work on my protocol and finish it (please tomorrow already!). And then I can finally start with the official thesis. Somehow I've been wanting to start on that one already for a while, in my head it seems like such a simple thing to write after all the difficult and precise work on the protocol. Probably there will be a lot of trouble with writing the thesis as well, but at least I am optimistic about it for now. NOW FINISH THE DAMN PROTOCOL YOU IDIOT!!!

Summer Outfits

Once more it's been too long. I've been so tired lately, I did not feel like doing anything. However, this week we had three days of spring-like weather and it made me feel much better!

I am currently working on lots of outfits at the same time. Making a summer top, a summer skirt and still hoping to make the bikini I started on last year.

Last week I started working on a dress I had in my mind for years. It turned out a bit different than I had planned, but it sure looks nice! The pic is the way I start with al my projects: first draw each part on paper to make sure it fits. It is so much easier to measure everything on paper than on fabric, especially the jersey fabric since it is so stretchy.

For my summer outfits I decided to stick with ideas I had since last year. I bought lots of neon fabric last year and I want to add little hints of the fabric in my outfits. It should not be too flashy, just nice little details in neon.

I should really start taking pictures of all the things I made, it's been too long and I am only posting little hints all the time and forget to show the finished clothes.

As far as my romantic life goes: nothing really happens. I got two mails after the sweet text messages. The first one was really sweet, telling me he thought about me everytime he opens the Dutch learning book (please open that book every minute of the day!). The second one was not f en answering my question...could be he is just too busy, as far as I can tell he has almost no spare time so when he does he should be sleeping (or reading my book). It hurts though, but I knew already since he told me he had no time for a relationship and also is not that into me...Still I am hoping for a miracle. I so like him. And oh my gosh, the promo pics that were released yesterday! He looks so handsome, I have been drooling over them all day. I am such a sad person. Get a life!

I also got some news (finally!) from the ballet school I have been waiting for to reply me since before Christmas. They are sorry but they don't want to be involved in my study. Really, would it have been so hard to answer me the first time I asked??? Oh well, now I can finally move on and finish all details to send the protocol in for reviewing. And of course I am this slow person who did not do all the little details before so I still need to do them...