a Good Day!

[lobelia321]

Yesterday I had a really Good Day! This is what I did:

• Went and signed up to my new gym club now that the notice I had to give to my old one has expired. I love my new gym club! It has a pool with a glass ceiling, and yesterday the sun shone right onto it and it was lovely! The water in the pool is warm; the steam room is super super steamy; the people are so nice and middle-aged! There is no horrible MTV blaring away. I listened to blogtalkradio MissusSmartyPants giving style advice. Afterward, I felt completely zonked and well-worked-out!

• Cycled back home to my In The Centre of Town New Home through the sunshine. Was inspired by style-advice radio show to take off my jeans and top and to put on Funky Funster Babe outfit! Black tunic dress, black long-sleeved Tee, black tights, black lace-up brogues, and my plastic orange trashy long necklace plus short orange bolero woolly cardie. I looked fab!

• Ate German bread for lunch. Took bike to bike repair.

• Pulled my granny trolley behind me, containing my laptop and two ringbinders. Sat in Caffé Nero for 2 1/2 hours or so, with my ipod set to a playlist I haven't heard for a while 'Top without B'wood'. Worked on my academic book on 19th-century visual narrative, to be precise: wrote an overview of the key literature.

• Renewed our parking permit wot we now need that we live Right In The Centre of Town! Ambled through a few shops but Bought Nothing.

• Posted two overdue bills. Drove to B&Q to buy paint and a tap because Polish swoon!boy due to come on the morrow to paint the bedroom and fit a kitchen tap.

• Did the shopping. Fetched the bike. Made minestrone with little horn-shaped noodles. Ate it with t'boys. It were delish!

• Walked 5 minutes (!!) to a college (which I now can do as we Live In The Centre of Town!) to a seminar and listened to a paper given by a woman I had e-mailed to say I liked her article just ten days earlier! Chatted to people I knew and met some new ones. Felt very tired in the seminar, though....

• Came home. Chatted to t'h. Went to bed!

So? What was so good about this day? And how to remember it should the Black Dog come re-visit?

Ingredients: Sunshine. Physical exertion. Café. Lively music wot I like. Intellectual activity. No bureaucracy. No emails. Did not go in to work. Went out and about among people. Did overdue stuff. Cooked healthy meal. Sat at dinner table with sons. Dressed fabulously.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_inbetween_/]

I think "Right in the center of Town" was a key ingredient enabling all this activity which in turn made it such a successful and pleasant day filled to the brim with lively, physical and interactive stuff. I'll just cling to the tomato soup in order not to feel too jealous about omg swimming and walking to relevant college stuff. Add to the list for black days of course.

/and don't forget the photos; visual memory might help *cough*

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I really posted this as a kind of aide-mémoir for myself, to know 'what to do'. I don't know: I just felt really good all day!! ;-)

And today it all wibbled into handsome handyman....

What tomato soup doest thou cling to?

[http://users.livejournal.com/_inbetween_/]

Me not wanting to eat Minestrone is what I clung to, sanely seeing the fly in the ointment there :)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

*burst out laughing* Waiter, there's a fly in my soup!

Or no, hang on.

"Handyman, there's a fly in my minestrone! Can you, um, slurp it out for me?"

[minavox.livejournal.com]

Brilliant day, indeed!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Oh, it was so good! I'm trying to remember it (hence posting) as a kind of future recipe. :-) Sometimes it's good to know how little it takes. And how one is in control of a lot of it. (Not the sunshine, obviously.)

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

I adore living Right In The Centre of Town! My husband doesn't care for the noise, but I love the convenience of not having to drive most days.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Oh, you do? You also live in the centre of town? Once you posted pictures of your back garden (in the snow??) so for some reason I always pictured you out in the burbs or in the countryside! But isn't it fab? I hardly ever see my car these days.

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

Well, "town" for me is a relatively small place - I think we have population 15,000. The nearest large city is 4 hours away by road.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Ooh, you made me google! Turns out that according to the 2001 census my town has a population of 108 thousand, incl. 22 000 students (who, I guess, are here only during term-time).

[msilverstar]

Yay, fabulous day!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

As I said to minavox, I am trying to record the recipe here in case of need against the future Dog. Because a lot of it is in one's own control, really. Not the sunshine, clearly, but a lot of the other stuff.

[brightest-blue.livejournal.com]

It sounds lovely. Just reading about it lifted my spirits. The only thing missing is a pic of you in your fabulous outfit. *hints*

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I have a pic on my camera! Must remember to down- and then upload!

*waves frantically*

[viva-gloria.livejournal.com]

Sunshine and lack of schedule would do it for me, though swimming always cheers me and meandering into and out of central areas is certainly lovely! Also 'dressing fabulously' though I don't do that so much lately ...

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

You know, lack of schedule (I discovered for me) is actually a killer. It's like a big open door, welcoming the old Black Dog inside. For me, at any rate, the day has to be busy and filled with different activities. The insight from Tuesday came from realising that it's good to do the great stuff first (because "I'll go to the caf´ but let me just do these emails first / empty the dishwasher first / do this thing first" inevitably ends up in not going at all) but then stopping short of vegging at the caf´ all day long and going off to do duty-things and chores.

Dressing fabulously makes a huge difference. Even if you force yourself. I am determined to keep a little list of say, five fabulous outfits for times of need. Because you forget what even makes you feel fabulous when in the grip of the chien.

[viva-gloria.livejournal.com]

For me, 'lack of schedule' is not so much to do with not being busy as not having someone else's time-related plans imposed on me. It's fine if I need to go to library, chemist and Co-op -- but not if I have to be at library at 3pm to fit with someone else's plans, or have to wait for someone else to get home before I head out, or am waiting on someone to phone and let me know if their plans intersect with mine.

I have a little metric which means I need to (try to) do something in most of the following categories, every day: social, physical, creative, cultural, domestic, helpful. It's good to help me balance. And today so far I have managed all but 'social' and am going to a wine-tasting this evening :)

You are quite right about dressing fabulously: I should do it more often, because it really does cheer me up through the bleakest days.

But then so will the two potted hyacinths I bought this morning!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see what you mean. For me, the empty days are the worst. I must guard myself against the empty days and fill them up with my own schedule. If I have someone else's plans imposed me, I'm actually okay!

I remember my behavioural therapist person telling me to do five things every day (in between meals/snacks): social, intellectual, physical, relaxing, pleasurable. I never quite got the hang of the difference between relaxing and pleasurable but in times wot are bad I also try to fall back on this formula. I like the domestic: I think the people who devise these things are not women and don't appreciate the gloomy state of mind that an unwashed pile of laundry can drive one to ("I'm hopeless; I can't get this right; I'm a bad whatever" etc.). And I like helpful because being taken out of oneself is so important!!! I'm pondering the creative because 'intellectual' covers my academic research but doesn't quite seem to cover the itch of fic.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Oh and P.S. I finally read one of those Inception fics you recced ages ago, Mirabella, Towards Zero, and omg is this fic hot and sweet! *fans self*

[viva-gloria.livejournal.com]

isn't it lovely? She has written some other Inception fic that I really love and admire, but Towards Zero is still one of my warm fuzzy go-to stories for bleak nights. (Currently I unsleep -- there must be a better verb for insomnia! more elegant than 'lie awake'! -- for an hour or so every night, and it's brilliant fic-reading time, because reading on Palm means not switching light on.)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

What a good method, reading with the Palm. Switching the light on always feels like giving in but lying in the dark and ruminating is also not great so this is a great compromise! I'll get on to your other recs next.

I get the whole Eames/Arthur thing but what puzzles me is why not more people are pairing Cillian Murphy who (to me) is of an ethereal beauty barely to be believed, and the ethereal beauty plus his sort-of tough masculinity and short hair just spin me out into space.

[viva-gloria.livejournal.com]

I find switching the light on really stuffs my chances of getting back to sleep -- if it's just Palm-light my brain doesn't think 'bright! daytime!'. Not that daytime is very bright at present.

Cillian Murphy is indeed a thing of beauty. Perhaps it's lack of obvious pairing for him?