[hamster-bamster]

I am home alone and I have figured how to use Private Browsing on Internet Explorer, my bff's only browser, so I am logging on for a sec.

-- I had the easiest flight ever. I took Zyprexa on the plane and was sleeping for a few hours then waking up for a bit and then going back to sleep. Time literally flew. I had in the past always felt stir crazy on long flights but this time I did not, not at all! It is probably an uncommon way to use Zyprexa but boy am I glad that I decided to try it. Much recommended.

-- I am staying with my bff, her H and her son and daughter. I first stayed with D. but he cannot NOT smoke in his small apartment and I got a migraine that required two applications of Imitex (two is max in a 24 hour period) and second hand smoke is a typical migraine trigger. So I decided that I will go live with my bff who has a smoke-free household. Now I know why I had so many migraines as a kid - my father smoked in the apartment (he is a chain-smoker). D. was upset but I did not want to endure it and he is afraid to go outside for a smoke because he thinks that he would get a cold. My former teacher and bff both tried to tell me that he really cannot abstain, but it is hard for me to imagine that because I do not have any first hand experience with chemical dependency.

-- Bff's children are delightful and she is constantly unhappy with them. More on it later.

-- I wanted to be a helpful guest so I cooked soup and did the dishes and the kids liked the soup and the next soup I will make having polled the little girl on her preferences is split pea.

-- Almost right away I got a bug, something viral, after being completely fine in California for well over a year. Maybe some new local viruses attacked me and my immune system was not prepared. It is not too bad during the day but the congestion makes it really difficult to sleep at night, so Amitriptyline stopped working for sleep and I have to take up to 15 mg Zyprexa to make my brain go to sleep despite breathing difficulties

-- I got over the jet lag faster than before, also thanks to being able to force sleep on the local schedule by taking 10 mg Zyprexa.

-- I am still off Geodon with no hallucinations, no mania, no nothing, but this can hardly be my achievement because after taking so much Zyprexa, anyone would be expected to be free of psychosis - it is stronger than Geodon. So basically I have not had a chance to really see how I manage on Lithium alone.

-- People here are really weird with respect to distances. D. was trying to explain how to use buses to go from his place to the subway station. In the end he said that the station is three stops away. I went "really, and you take a bus for such a short distance?" - I walked it and was where I needed to be in no time flat. Then, bff's apartment is farther from her subway station but still I walked and she NEVER has walked. I understand that it is too far a walk for when she is with the children but she has never walked alone (her husband has). I think things must have changed because I remember growing up here I, with my mother, often walked instead of waiting for a bus.

-- Tonight I will go see a comedy play, if I am lucky enough to get tickets - the box office has no more tickets but bff says if I come half an hour earlier they will seat me somehow.

-- I had to do something at the local branch of my bank here - something that cannot be done online - and I completed it yesterday so I am productive despite the cold. But still, the cold is so annoying, especially at night.

-- I have piercing back pain below my left shoulder - that is an indirect consequence of taking Topamax. I used to have this pain a lot, then I started standing at work and eliminated almost all sitting and the pain completely and miraculously went away - without massage or physical therapy or medications. Then I started Topamax, became dizzy, resumed sitting at my desk and after a month of sitting here it goes - my pain is back. I am not at all looking forward to relearning how to stand at work but I will have to bite the bullet because I do not like pain.

-- If I get better I will go see my former teacher tomorrow and will visit the cemetery where my mom and other relatives were buried. I will also visit two close gfs, one of whom I have known since adolescence and the other, all the way since elementary school. And, D. and I will go to a still life art exhibition.

-- I must admit that I was relieved when I decided to stay with bff, and I know why - not just because bff has no tobacco smoke in her apartment. D. lives with his elderly mom, and it was depressing to me to see her. She must have been a cheerful woman, an artist, in the past - her paintings, mostly still life and landscapes, are everywhere in the apartment and they are quite wonderful and cheerful. She no longer paints. I noticed hand tremor which happens at her age. He is upset that she does not attempt painting. I said that perhaps she cannot hold the brush - you need a steady hand for painting and tremor does not allow it. He responded with "that, too, but she also is no longer able to paint due to cognitive deficiencies - you have to think through a plan of painting each picture, you have to use your brain to decide how to mix paints, and she is no longer able to do that". So when he is not with her in her room, she is alone on her bed and the TV is always on and she often falls asleep. I do not know what exactly was so depressing. Maybe my realization that when I am her age (which will likely happen because I have taken care of the suicide risk and absent that, I have a long lifespan before me because all my grandparents and greatgrandparents lived a long life), none of my children would treat me the way D. treats his mother - and what he does is really heroic. Maybe it was depressing because witnessing decline is just depressing per se. Maybe it was depressing because I saw that he does not touch her on a daily basis - he feeds her, bathes her, manages all her medications and gives the medications to her, but he does it without touch, except for bathing. When he works, she is alone all day long with the TV on. I do not think I would want to live like that - if I am unable to care for myself, I would prefer to live in an assisted living facility with some activities during and just plainly other people around me, but for that I need to be saving money and I cannot. So maybe that depressed me... at any rate, bff's angelic looking 4 year old daughter (blonde locks, blue eyes, full red lips) who complimented my cooking is a much more cheerful and uplifting companion than the old woman. I sort of feel bad because it is almost as if I had fled the gloomy reality of old age in favor of bright optimistic kids and am ashamed of myself. Am I making sense with all that?

over all, it sounds like a good trip and you're getting a lot done and enjoying yourself

sorry about the bug and the pain

[hamster-bamster]

Not only have I not recovered, but 1) bff's 4 year old daughter became ill with the same symptoms, 2) I now have a sore throat and a raspy voice to boot, 3) stomatitis and 4) I was left to babysit the children and they asked me to read Pippy the Longstocking to them while they are preparing to nap, and it hurt me so much to talk that I only managed one full page and had to apologize and quit.

My T emailed me that she often gets sick when she comes over here too.

Bad luck!

[purpledaisy]

Wow! You're getting a lot done. Hope you're having fun.

What city are you visiting? I've never spent time in a walkable city. My city is not pedestrian-friendly. City buses are dirty and nasty. No subway or train.

[~Christina]

Sorry you caught a Bug .. But you keep on enjoying your trip and seeing friends ! Good for you

[hamster-bamster]

I am not looking forward to the number my scale will show when I get back after nightly use of Zyprexa...

[hamster-bamster]

Now I am unhappy. Bff's daughter saw me holding my phone and asked why my hand was shaking. I looked and she is right, I still have tremor.

[hamster-bamster]

Purple, I am in Moscow and let me tell you, compared to Germans, Canadians, and Americans Russians are by far the craziest one along at least one axis - their beliefs as those. Beliefs manifest themselves in everyday life. It is not that I did not know it many years ago, but I thought that this particular craziness was limited to my late mom and other people of the older generation. Nope, young people are equally insane. Ninety nine percent of people are insane in the same way my mother was insane, one percent of people are insane in exactly the opposite way and I am the only person with a logical miind. That is my conclusion.

I think this particular brand of craziness is a specific Russian attribute, at least I have not seen it anywhere else - not in Germany and not in North America. No, I did see a Russiian immigrant in Texas, and old lady, microwave her cereals with milk until hot but she was an immigrant and she was old. D microwaves cereals with milk for his mother until the milk boils with large bubbles (recalling it makes me want to puke) and he was surpriised that I pour COLD milk on my cereals.
My mother would THAW icecream for me because she was afraid I would catch a cold from normal icecream. But my mother was seriuosly crazy and until today I thought that that explained thawed icecream. Well... today bff's H bought icecream for the New Year bash and forgot to put it in the freezer. Bff said that it is OK, it is even bettter because now it can be given to the children. And poor children had to eat the disgusting sweet frothy liquid. One would have thought that ICEcream is called ICEcream for a reason, but Russian people including relatively young ones (bff is 43) THAW it. No, really, thawed icecream. When when several days ago I ate some icecream from the freezer (I do not buy icecream in America because of the sugar content and because it tastes blah, but Moscow has the best icecream in the world so I made an exception), bff asked why I was eating icecream while having a cold. Well, it is called a cold but in reality it was a virus, a bug, and eating cold icecream is absolutely fine - it does not exacerbate symptoms and you cannot catch a cold from frozen icecream. What a weird belief, but it is so widespread. By the way I am done fighting the virus successfully and am very glad.

When bff came home from visiting her grandparents today (I babysat the children)

[hamster-bamster]

She did not say hello to her daughter - she asked where the daughter's tights and slippers were. The daughter was barefoot on nice warm wooden floor - what is wrong with it?

I just do not to argue with bff nor do I want to set a bad (from her vantage point) example that would allow her children to question her wisdom so I wear slippers even though I much prefer being barefoot. Again, Emma, ex' late mother, insisted on slippers or else I would get violently sick but I thought at that time that it is because she was so old. Nope, again, bff is only 43 years old.

D. Blowdries his hair until completely dry before going outside because he is convinced that otherwise he will catch a cold. That reminds me of my mother and others admoniishing me to do the same when I was growing up and how I have always disregarded their advice because I have never had enough patience to blowdry my longish thich hair and never in my life have I caught a cold from having wet hairr

[hamster-bamster]

Bff does not have a microwave because she believes that microwaves a dangerous. To reheat mashed potatoes, she puts them in a skillet with a bit of water, which is a big. No-no from the culinary perspective. At the same time she uses non-stick cookware which seems to be suspect. I did not say anything of course.

She does not give the children yogurt from the fridge - she first puts the yogurt into a bowl with hot water to warm it up. I can only imagine how disgusting warm yogurt must taste.

Her daughter did get sick, probably from me. It is a virus, a SELF-LIMITING infectionthat goes away by itself in a few days. Nothing but ample fluid intake and patience are neecessary. No, bff treats her non-stop all day long with various cough syrups, medications, homeopathy, inhalers, and an iodine lattice which means painting a lattice pattern on the chest and on the back using a Q-tip soaked in iodine solution, in oorder to heat the lungs and bronchia through.

Bff has a small garbage pail and I had to take garbage out many many times since the ffofood prep for the New Year bash generated a lot of waste. The dumpster is within a few feet of the bulding entrance so I did not put on my coat etc - I am most definitely too lazy for that. D. Saw it and asked why I was not dressed properly. But dashing out to put trash in the dumpster takes LESS time than putting on and zipping my coat plus putting on my hat etc. Would it not be weird to do the whole nine yards of warm clothing for a one minute let us call it outing?

And the apartments are so warm inside, much warmer than in California.

[hamster-bamster]

I have just described the craziness of 99 per cent of the population. The remainded beliieves in so called conditioning using snow and cold water. In winter, they stand barefoot on the snow believing in the. Healing properties of this procedure. They also makes holes in the ice that covers water bodies and swim in ice cold water. In summer they take cold showers and pour cold water on their children, head first, everry day. I was like that briefly many years ago... basically it is the other extreme.

I now appear to be the only person who, on the one hand, does eat unthawed icecream, and, on the other hand, does not stand barefoot on the snow. That does make me fairly normal, I think.

[purpledaisy]

Hot milk on cereal?

Hot yogurt?

Nasty!

I hate wearing slippers. Where I live, we get all four seasons and right now it's pretty cold. Finally got a little snow yesterday. But I still run around inside either barefoot or with socks on.

I don't bother to put on shoes unless I am going outside.

Well, that's not true. The gate on my backyard privacy fence keeps blowing open, so when I let me dog out to pee lately I run out there barefoot so I can peek around the corner to see whether the gate is closed. If it has flopped open again, I run into the cold grass, close it, and go back into the house.

No big deal. I do it so quickly that I'm not too cold.

I've got carpet and hardwood floors both in this house. Same with the house I grew up in, and I've NEVER worn slippers.

I often wash my hair, pull it into a ponytail or put mousse in it and kind of scrunch it to make loose curls, and then go outside. I do that more often than I use the blowdryer.

I guess I'm weird, too.

[hamster-bamster]

You are normal, me thinks.

Not just hot milk on cereals but BOILING hot, with bubbles. Yikes.

[unaluna]

Excellent! My Italian father would let a glass of milk sit out for half an hour to warm before drinking it, and I was not allowed cold liquids when I had a cold. I have a twinge of guilt every day but I don't dry my hair; I just wear a runner's headband and a hooded coat. A Ukrainian coworker and I traded recipes for boiled wine to kill colds. I think it comes from having waited so long for central heating in their homes.

[hamster-bamster]

Glintwein or something like this? I used to make it in a slow cooker just for the fun of it, with cloves and some other spices. I think it is supposed to be an apres-ski drink in the Alps.

[purpledaisy]

I can't even stand cold milk. Boiling hot milk would be disgusting.

Why do people think you will develop a virus because your hair is damp? It does not make sense.

Makes as much sense as telling your teenages not to dry-hump because they'll end up pregnant.

[hamster-bamster]

PD, you are spot on with the pregnancy risk analogy. But look, in German, English, and Russian the common language word for a respiratory infection is COLD. I think it conveys the belief that cold or erkaeltung in German comes from all things cold.

[hamster-bamster]

I needed to get something from the balcony and bff asked the kids to step outside the room so that they would not get cold. It took me a second to open and close the door. Serious craziness...

[bluemountains]

Hammie, It sounds like you are get quite a lot of together time with your bff! I just spent two days with my sister, and now I remember why we don't vacation together any more. Her habit of talking nonstop about the same things over and over does me in.
Bluemountains

[hamster-bamster]

Originally Posted by bluemountains

Hammie, It sounds like you are get quite a lot of together time with your bff! I just spent two days with my sister, and now I remember why we don't vacation together any more. Her habit of talking nonstop about the same things over and over does me in.
Bluemountains

Funny!

I had an action-packed day yesterday. I got up at a regular time despite having gone to. Sleep after midnight. Everyone else was asleep. My getting up early enough told me that. I am completely over the jet lag and I am thankful to Zyprexa for gettng me through the jet lag so painlessly. I am also at the same time aware, looking at my body in the mirror, that I must have regained ALL the weight lost since the beginning of biking. Yes, one week of Zyprexa plus being sedentary due to being sick plus lots of holiday food completely erased ALL my progress. But that is OK ~ I am no longer sedentary because I am done with ghe cold and I walk a lot, I no longer take Zyprexa for sleep because absemt the nasal congestion, Elavil works just fine, and I no longer eat everything in sight. Because I weaned SMYself off Zyprexa. I do have a few pills remaining for the trip back and tbe jet lag in. California. D. Thinks that it is an awfully expensive way to get sleep. But that is ok, as I got my Zyprexa free from the county. Sure if I needed to pay hundreds of dollars for it, I would have reconsidered. He offered me several non-FDA approved Europan medications, somthing Dutch, something French or whatever, that are inexpensive and work for sleep in low doses while being so called mild APs in high doses. I declined. This is because I once read on Crazymeds that if one keeps starting and stopping new medications, one can become treatment resistant, and I just one month started and stopped topamax so I wanted to be careful. Plus, I am thankful that Zyprexa is so effective and do not feel like

[hamster-bamster]

Experimenting. I am sort of loyal to Z., funny. That is OK, as at home I will resume biking and swimming and add treadmill and WILL lose that weight.

Yesterday I was a little euphoric in a quiet non-manic way. I did not have a migraine, did not have a cold, stomatitis was gone and I just had the back pain. Being almost painXfree was my reason for feeling so good. I planned to make a salad and cook a split green. Pea soup with salt pork. When bff got up, she said that after all the holiday food she wanted a light soup, without animal fat. I suggested a vegetarian cabbage soup. She agreed. I started putting the ingredients on the table and determined that I was
Missing white canned beans in tomato sauce. I went to the little grocery store located in bff's apartment building but it was closed until two pm due to the date being jan first. I then decided that I would start cooking and go back to the store at two, since beans are the next to last ingredient (by order of being put in the soup) anyway. I started working. I. Did mise en place, the French term for putting all ingredients in separate bowls on thr table for convenient access. I did everything correctly. I then left the soup pot on the lowest level of heat and went to the store without giving bff instructions. That was a mistake. When I returned, the soup was boiling rapidly and there is a Southern expression BOILED soup is SPOILED soup and I live by it, always making sure that no more than a couple of small bubbles erupt on the surface of the liquid at any one time.

Bff spoiled my soup... she told me that she increased the heat just to bring the soup to the boiling point, but that is not true - the liquid was boiling rapidly and my carefully prepared creation was ruthlessly destroyed. When I tried my soup, I hated the grossly overcooked vegetables. My hosts liked it though which made me conclude that that is how they are used to cooking their soups. Ok, I have learned my lesson and for my pea soup the day after tomorrow I will first go to the grocery store and then start cooking.

The salad however was a success. I married Russia and California by using the. Typically Russian unrefined sunflower oil with typically Californian arugula and several lettuces. I also added cut up kiwis, kumato tomatoes, salt, purple onion, and freshly squeezed lemon juice. Bff said that this light salad was a perfect follow-up to the heavy holiday fare, and. I was quite happy.

I then said that I would pay a visit to bff's mother whom I know very well, to say Happy New Year and give her my handmade present - a necklace. Since I was going to see grandma, who lives within a nice long walking distance, it was decided that I would be treated like the Little Red Riding Hood in that bff sent leftover holiday food plus my soup plus my. Salad to grandma who was having a hard time cooking for herself due to a broken arm in a sling.

With a big bagged filled with food and with the necklace in a festive printed organza bag I left bff's house. I asked for walking directions and two people said that I needed to take public transit as the walk would be too long. So it is not just my friends who shirk walking. Finally I saw a man coming back from his cross country skiing trip. He had bright rosy cheeks and looked tired but optimistic. I was an extremely fast skier at school, outrunniing athletic boys, and it is my belief that had I stayed in a cold climate, be it Moscow or Montreal, I would have stayed thin because cross country and skate skiing that I love so much are also the best cardio. So I decided that this man would not say that I needed to take public transit. I was right - he gave me clear directions and I learned my. Way well enough to not needing to ask for directions on the way back.

Had a good time with bff's mom. Had tea with sweets - when I visit people, I eat whatever they offer me, trying to be polite. I can always go back to restricted carbs diet when I am back in California.

Then, I went to see Lana, another close gf from adolescent years who knows bff as well - we were from the same group of friends back then. Lana is French-Russian bilingual who has always worked for French companies splitting her time between Paris and Moscow. She now works for a top haute couture company as a press attache. She is one year. Younger than me. For many years, she wanted but was unable to conceive and finally after 4 In Vitro Fertilization attempts, she conceived and gave birth to twin boys at age 40. The boys were term and each weighed big enough for a single birth, which is unusual for twins.

I was happily chatting with Lana and her mother while her father was taking the kids who are now 15 months old for a walk when I casually inquired when Michael, Lana's second H and the father of the twins, would come back home from seeing clients in his T practice. I certainly could not have possibly expected to hear that Michael DIED from a heart attack hving just turned 40, when Lana was seven months pregnant. Lana is a widow and the twins do not have a father.

On that day, Lana, with her huge belly, left home as usual to go to work. On her way, in the car, she had a premonition, a feeling that something was wrong. She returned home to find Michael dead on the floor. He just returned from Switzerland where he attended a continuing education program in Jungian psychology. He just finalized his divorce (he has a 6 year old son whom Lana regularly invites to bond with his half-brothers, being on friendly terms with Michael's first wife) and was planning to marry Lana, for whom it would have been the second marriage as well. Everything was going as planned and nobody could anticipate the tragedy.

Because they were not married, Lana had to go to court to prove paternity using signed consent forms from the IVF treatment, all in order to give the boys their father's last name.

Lana gets a lot of moral support from Michael's mother who survived her son. She is too frail to offer physical help but she is generous with emotional support. Lana's parents help her every day and her younger sister Veronica who has no children of her own helps out on weekends. Lana also has a nanny who takes care of the twins together with Lana's prents, and a cleaning lady. All this help allows her to leave for work at nine and come back at ten. So basically she is with the children on weekends only. When she is on a business trip in Paris, the nanny moves in.

The older twin looks exactly like his late father.

Lana has always been optimistic, determined, and hardworking, but when the kids were born she decided that she would no longer work as hard and put in as much time as before. Still, she does because her direct supervisor just had a baby and is home on a maternity leave and Lana performs her executive functions in her absence.

I knew my friend was strong but I never imagined that life would give her challenges of that magnitude.

[WhiteClouds]

Hi there Hamster!! Good to see you online. I hope you get to feeling better soon.

[hamster-bamster]

When I came back, I got a migraine, probably because I had mostly been having tea with sweets and did not have a normal dinner with a protein source. I used the last dose of Imitrex - the rest of my supply is in D.'s apt. The pain went away and I slept a bit but then woke up in pain and without medicine. BFF suggested a hot shower. It worked - afterr. Long hot shower I was able to sleep for an hour and a half. Then woke up in pain and took another hot shower and had another hour and a half of pain-free sleep. Then I woke up with pain at 5 and it still at 5 and was able to write the longest post. So, thanks to bff, I now have a non-pharmacological way of dealing with migraines! I will thank bff in the morning.

Tomorrow I will see Katya, my gf from elementary school years. We used to be neighbors. Katya is a jazz singer. She has a 5 year old daughter Anna whom I have never seen.

Tomorrow night Lana and I will see a Shakespearean comedy.

The day after tomorrow my maternal grandma. Would have turned 101 and D. And I will go to the cemetery. After that we will go to a still life art exhibition.

On the fourth I am invited to my former teacher's place. I was not only her student but later, when in college, her part-time colleague as I taught HS English at her school.

On the fifth, I have a placeholder to see the guy who taught Physics to the same students (and Lana taught French). He lives in France but is home for the holidays.

On the sixth, at D.'s request which surprised me I will accompany him to the local IKEA to help him select some items. I have never been a shopping consultant before but whatever, if he trusts me enough, I will be glad to help.

Then packing and going home.

[bluemountains]

I enjoy the descriptions of your friends and their lifestyles. It sounds like you are having a wonderful, eventful time. I knew you had grown up in another country, but I missed out, if you ever shared that it was Russia. Is Russia just one of the countries? For some reason, Hamster, I always have thought you were originally from Germany. Funny how our perceptions are sometimes completely off!
Bluemountains

[hamster-bamster]

Originally Posted by WhiteClouds

Hi there Hamster!! Good to see you online. I hope you get to feeling better soon.

Thank you!, I took. Another hot shower which gave me another stretch of sleep with GOOD dreams, and I am now comfortably at 3 with my migraine and already having coffee and breakfast! Yay to bff for giving me this wondrous suggestion.