KB Girl - Story Time

[Scaly Freak]

34 minutes ago, KB Girl said:

Regal Sidekick must have been a very smart cat too. Jaap had a cat, Can’t say I ever noticed any training. But she was already 18 years old when we moved in together so I didn’t know her very long. When she passed away it was the first time I saw Jaap cry, he was completely heartbroken. (Dunno if this is an awkward place to ask how you’re doing?) 

 

She was far above average for cats when it comes to intelligence, to the point it became inconvenient sometimes. She knew an impressive number of English words, and loved solving puzzles, especially if there was an edible reward afterward  

 

I'm doing better. I have reached the stage where powerful reminders, like the prescription card that bought her kidney supplements, or her food bowl, no longer make me cry. It's progress, of a sort.

[KB Girl]

23 hours ago, Scaly Freak said:

 

She was far above average for cats when it comes to intelligence, to the point it became inconvenient sometimes. She knew an impressive number of English words, and loved solving puzzles, especially if there was an edible reward afterward  

 

I'm doing better. I have reached the stage where powerful reminders, like the prescription card that bought her kidney supplements, or her food bowl, no longer make me cry. It's progress, of a sort.

Thank you for the story  I’m glad you’re doing a bit better. The food bowl.. that was a killer for me too. 

[KB Girl]

Sunday Jaap had to take over my classes because I hadn’t gotten the test results back yet. I’m not sure I’m sick anylonger, I do still feel awful but that might be the sleep deprivation. 
 

in the morning Emma and I played some yoshi’s world on the Super Nintendo, she finished a level by herself, which was cool. We also made chocolate chip cookies. They tasted delicious but were a bit flat, I’m guessing it’s the fake butter.. I’ve frozen the remaining dough to see if that helps. Made falafel for dinner, which turned out a bit too garlicky. Bummer. 
 

The baby still has trouble breathing through her nose and refused to drink all day. I ended up spoon feeding her milk 🤷‍♀️ She seemed happy about that and she’s sleeping now. 
 

Story time 

 

 

 

Super Nintendo is the one I grew up with. We didn’t have one ourselves, but we had a neighbour with kids around our age that did. She would play Zelda with a bunch of kids watching. I have very fond memories of ‘a link to the past’, yet I’ve hardly ever played it myself. 
This trend of watching other people play Zelda continued when I switched schools and met my best friend. She had a Nintendo 64 and ocarina of time. My role was to translate the English. We were 11 at the time, so it was slow going. 
At one point we got stuck in a dungeon and we decided to call a help desk with a pay phone. We collected all our coins and that of our younger siblings and spend about 10 minutes on a pay phone by the side of a busy road. Crazy times. 
My friend eventually moved away before we had finished the game. I would go there on the weekends and we would move the tiny tv to her room, buy lots of chocolate and basically play all weekend. Well, she would play, I watched and translated  
We eventually grew up- or she did anyway- and she would dress me up and drag me to parties or the mall or whatever teenage girls do. But when she recovered from brain surgery last year we rented an airbnb, borrowed a twitch and spend the whole weekend either walking in the woods or playing Zelda. While eating chocolate. 

 

[Elastigirl]

I remember you talkingabout your friend who had brain surgery.Now I have a fun story to connect to here.😀Hope you and baby feel better, and that baby lets you sleep! It seems when kids are that little that there is always some bug, and now on top of that you have that stressor of wondering if it's  Corona every time you get sick!

[Waanie]

On 10/24/2020 at 11:28 PM, KB Girl said:

we’ve never really celebrated Sinterklaas, my mom is not dutch so it wasn’t a big deal for us anyway and my baby sisters birthday is December 5th.. but Jaap had some good memories of it I think. Maybe we should try this year. Emma might enjoy. Maar dan zonder zwarte piet he. 

You really missed out! We used to celebrate it with the whole family at my grandparents place, where everyone gave each other small gifts. I really have fond memories of Sinterklaas. Also getting presents in your shoe between half November and 5 December is cool . We do not talk about the hygiene of having kruidnoten in your shoes before eating them, we just eat them that way .

 

I really hope that you and the baby will feel better soon, and that the test will come back negative.

[h3r0]

I love me some Zelda. I hope you get well soon. 

[spezzy]

I love that story so much! <3

[KB Girl]

23 hours ago, Elastigirl said:

I remember you talkingabout your friend who had brain surgery.Now I have a fun story to connect to here.😀Hope you and baby feel better, and that baby lets you sleep! It seems when kids are that little that there is always some bug, and now on top of that you have that stressor of wondering if it's  Corona every time you get sick!

She is one of those rare friends that feel like family and will always be my friend even if by some stroke of fate we don't talk for 5 years

And you're absolutely spot on about what a shitty situation it is right now. I don't worry so much myself, because I know it's likely just another kid-bug, but even so you can't just live your life as you normally would. 

 

9 hours ago, Waanie said:

You really missed out! We used to celebrate it with the whole family at my grandparents place, where everyone gave each other small gifts. I really have fond memories of Sinterklaas. Also getting presents in your shoe between half November and 5 December is cool . We do not talk about the hygiene of having kruidnoten in your shoes before eating them, we just eat them that way .

 

I really hope that you and the baby will feel better soon, and that the test will come back negative.

Test was negative! sorry I forgot to say, got it back last night. 

And haha, I did have my fair share of kruidnoten in my shoe, we did do that part of it the weekend before december 5th. It just.. it never seemed quite as magical to me as Christmas. We're not really sure yet what to do with our kids. And then we have the whole zwarte pieten thing which kind of puts a damper on it anyway eh. 

 

9 hours ago, h3r0 said:

I love me some Zelda. I hope you get well soon. 

Thanks! Definitely feeling better today  and Zelda is the bestest!

 

5 hours ago, spezzy said:

I love that story so much! ❤️

Glad to hear that  I love your belt so much! 

[KB Girl]

Monday I woke up feeling much better, just sore muscles all over. Got a bit more sleep but mostly it's because the sickness seems to have retreated. The baby was still a sick little mess today though and still refused to drink, which has me worried quite a bit. 

It's my sisters birthday but I didn't want to give her my non-corona cooties either because she owns her own business too and it's not cool to have to cancel appointments because you've got a runny nose.. so instead of tea and cake inside we went for a walk outside. It's really beautiful right now with all the fall colours. Other than that, didn't really do much today, though I felt really busy trying to get some food or liquid into the baby x) 

Oh my mom dropped by for tea when I had the kids in bed, she couldn't walk properly after getting out of bed this morning and I tried the magic knee fixer on her and it worked like magic and she was able to walk again. Very satisfying. 

 

Story time!

 

 

... well.... I got interrupted by kids waking up twice (both at the same time so Jaap was also busy) and I have this idea in my head that won't come out right so I spend 10 minutes on typing a sentence (this is such goooood anti-perfectionism practice for me!) that it's now almost mid night and my tired butt should get itself to bed asap... I'll leave you with a little tidbit and I'm still counting it towards my five because darnit I really tried. 

---

My sister and I get along quite well these days, but as kids we really didn't. We've speculated on the cause quite often. Perhaps it's because we are almost complete opposites- she's very feminine, outgoing, friends with everyone, wears a lot of makeup, cares about clothes- and she's decidedly not nerdy- she doesn't like math or games or reading, so we couldn't really bond over any topic until we both had kids. But quite possibly it's simply because when we were kids she 'borrowed' my gameboy colour and overwrote my Pokemon save game (over 100 hours played!) and I still haven't quite forgiven her for it
 

 

[h3r0]

I don't know what the magic knee fixer is but this is all I can think about 

 

[KB Girl]

7 hours ago, h3r0 said:

I don't know what the magic knee fixer is but this is all I can think about 

 

oh it's definitely something like that

No just one of the tricks Jaap uses to calm down the central nervous system so it stops giving pain signals. It's simple and works very often. And people will think you can do magic, very fun. 

[KB Girl]

Tuesday 

Back to work... had classes in the morning and classes in the evening. Did some training of my own, not too much, gotta ease back into it

• pushups 5x8 (hands elevated at 4.2)
• ring rows 5x5
• reverse lunges 20kg 4x5/5
• Bulgarian split squats bw 4x5/5
• handstand wall holds 8x0:30
• some animal flow work and some extra hip mobility things and silly single leg play which will hurt tomorrow

The baby still refuses to drink during the day so we've been trying to spoon feed her enough liquid to keep her hydrated, which is basically a full time job. Jaap seems sick now, which is just entirely unsurprising, it's like domino's really.. and our immune systems suck due to the chronic stress and sleep deprivation. He got a test this afternoon just to be sure. 

I'm really tired and I'm going to allow myself to skip out on story time in the hope that the rest of the week will be better/easier. 

 

Here, have a good things list instead; 

• I trained
• we have a really promising new intern who stepped up to help me with the double class since Jaap couldn't come to work
• the baby smiles at me every single time she sees me and she's been saying 'mamamamama' 
• Emma offered Jaap one of her princess band aids in such a sweet way
• I got home this afternoon and kind of expected the dog to come greet me for one second and that was sad but I also felt this bittersweet happiness that she was with us in the first place, you know? she was awesome. so that's a good development. 
• I was able to wash Emma's hair today- which was a real battle for a long time, but I've finally convinced her to trust me to keep the soap/water out of her eyes and then she was really sweet "oh it smells so nice" "oh thank you mom for making my hair so soft" "I want to show daddy how shiny it is" etc
• a new friend I made this the past year send me a text that she was happy she got to know me and be able to talk honestly/frankly with someone about having her first baby
• my star athlete got through a training I didn't expect her to get through (I was testing her), so that was a nice surprise
• my sister did our pilates class this morning, which is a good sign, a sign that things are going a bit better for her, I hope
• a gym member gave me a teething ring because I'd mentioned the baby getting her 3th and 4th at the same time, which is really sweet 
• another gym member had lost all training mojo so I'd tried writing a completely different program for him to try to help him get it back and he showed up at the gym this morning to get it done and texted me later he enjoyed it
• we had fries for dinner this evening, because something had to give really, but it was the first time in 3 or maybe even 4 weeks that we got take out so that's good- and we still ate veggies because we've been in the habit of having extra veg with either breakfast or lunch

Ok I feel a little bit better now, thank you. 

Going to get some cuddles from Jaap and then bed. See you tomorrow. 

[Scaly Freak]

Sleep well! I hope you feel better tomorrow.

[Renate]

Emma, Emma, you know exactly how cute you are don't you :D Ahwww. :) 

 

Get better soon!

[Mike Wazowski]

That's a really awesome list of good things! Glad you're finding lots of joy amidst the stressful times.

 

Fingers crossed for good news on Jaap's sickness.

[Elastigirl]

Great list of good things!

[KB Girl]

On 10/27/2020 at 11:02 PM, Scaly Freak said:

Sleep well! I hope you feel better tomorrow.

Thank you! Had rough luck, but did get a good nap. 

 

16 hours ago, Aθena said:

Emma, Emma, you know exactly how cute you are don't you Ahwww.

 

Get better soon!

Thanks! She probably does, or at least.. as we say, lief. 

 

3 hours ago, Mike Wazowski said:

That's a really awesome list of good things! Glad you're finding lots of joy amidst the stressful times.

 

Fingers crossed for good news on Jaap's sickness.

Not joy, that's not an emotion that comes to me easily, but when I make a list like that at least I feel grateful- and that's a positive emotion too. 

Good and bad news... x) see below

 

1 hour ago, Elastigirl said:

Great list of good things!

 had to remind myself

[KB Girl]

Wednesday

Unfortunately it was another bad night, but Jaap and I tag teamed the kids and I got a good nap and was able to clean up a bit and cook good food and do a reasonable job at work in the evening. Good news; the baby is drinking again and I am so relieved - she was definitely showing signs of dehydration and if it had lasted even an hour longer I would have taken her to get help. Also Jaap is still not feeling great, but at least his test came back negative. Bad news; my grandpa, aunt, uncle and their two teenage kids tested positive. The kids seem to be fine at least, hopefully the others will also feel better soon.. 

 

I got a bit of training done, only had 20 minutes in between appointments, so I went with the classic 'help me feel better please' lift aka deadlifts. 

• deadlifts 3x45, 3x65, 3x3x70, 10x55, 10x45
• goblet squats 5x8 with 16kg kettlebell
• strict press 5x5/5 with 10kg kettlebell

 

Story Time

(I thought I was going to skip it again, but then something popped into my head) 

I called 911 once. Not the dutch version either (which is 112) but the actual 911. 

I'll never forget the date because it was the day after the US elections in 2008. My best friend and I were backpacking / couch surfing through California and the day before (on Election Day) we had arrived in Santa Cruz. After having dinner (while watching the news) we walked through the pouring rain up to the most unappealing and depressing hostel we had seen thus far. It was late and we were already soaking wet, so we decided to just stay there for the night and perhaps look for something better in the morning. We woke up with red bumps all over and after consulting the internet we concluded it must be from bed bugs. We spend the most depressing morning at a launderette, trying to make sure we wouldn't bring the bed bugs with us to our next destination. Afterwards we had lunch at a cafe, discussing what we would do next- it wasn't a pleasant conversation since we were both feeling a bit low, a bit homesick and our funds were also running low. 

My friend started feeling really awful, sweating, high heart rate.. she laid down on the cafe couch. I had no idea what was going on. She told me she thought she was having a heart attack, so I called 911. An ambulance came to pick her up. They let me ride with her. I sat with her, next to her hospital bed, for what felt like several hours. Then they came to tell us that nothing was wrong, it definitely wasn't a heart attack. It had probably been a pretty severe panic attack. Neither of us had ever had a panic attack before, I certainly didn't know you could feel like you were dying from panic. 

The story continues from there with plenty more ups and downs. We had a really great time and a lot of valuable experiences. We surfed a lot of interesting and friendly couches.

My friend continued to have panic attacks for a year or two but never that bad again- it helps to know what it is that you're experiencing. 

Her travel insurance covered the cost of the ambulance and the hospital stay. 

[KB Girl]

My sister send me this photo of me and the girls that I love. Not sure why, it’s not that great.. but it’s precious.

[Elastigirl]

I hope your family with COvid will feel better soon, especially your grandpa.

[Scaly Freak]

2 hours ago, KB Girl said:

Unfortunately it was another bad night, but Jaap and I tag teamed the kids and I got a good nap and was able to clean up a bit and cook good food and do a reasonable job at work in the evening. Good news; the baby is drinking again and I am so relieved - she was definitely showing signs of dehydration and if it had lasted even an hour longer I would have taken her to get help. Also Jaap is still not feeling great, but at least his test came back negative. Bad news; my grandpa, aunt, uncle and their two teenage kids tested positive. The kids seem to be fine at least, hopefully the others will also feel better soon.. 

 

That is good news about Jaap and the baby. Sad about the positive tests.... I hope they recover soon!

[WhiteGhost]

I am really loving your stories, especially the one about the backstory between you and the friend who had brain surgery.  

[KB Girl]

20 hours ago, Elastigirl said:

I hope your family with COvid will feel better soon, especially your grandpa.

Thank you, me too. I also hope grandma didn't get it. 

 

18 hours ago, Scaly Freak said:

 

That is good news about Jaap and the baby. Sad about the positive tests.... I hope they recover soon!

thank you! it was perhaps only a matter time, since we live in the most infected country in the world now.

 

11 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:

I am really loving your stories, especially the one about the backstory between you and the friend who had brain surgery.  

That's very nice to hear, thank you  that's the same friend I went to California with. it's her birthday next week, I'm making her some Zelda themed things

[KB Girl]

Thursday

Normally I would probably skip updating, because I don't want to be depressing, but I really do need like a blanket and a cup of tea and 5 million hugs. 

However, I am determined to get this writing goal. Very determined. (what an odd word)

 

We got through the day. Jaap had naps. We ate leftovers. I took Emma outside to preserve her sanity. I did some work errands by bike, 4x10-15 minutes. I had an hour of open gym after teaching classes in the evening and had intended to do squats, but it was absolutely freezing and I wasn't dressed for it and I didn't manage to get myself to just go do something. 

 

Story Time. 

You may or may not know we also do life coaching at our gym. It's not life-style coaching, so that makes it a bit odd perhaps. Our teacher in this subject very aptly said 'health etc is not worth a whole lot if you have no reason to want to live' so that is where all life coaching starts. What makes life worth the trouble/hardship of living it. One of the first exercises and also one of the hardest for a lot of people is to write down a list of 100 goals. 100 only because good ideas come from having a lot of them. And then we try to minimise those hardships that come with life and manage ourselves in such a way that we might attain some of those goals. 

It's funny how this story runs away with me, I simply intended to talk about stress, but I wanted to explain where my thoughts about this come from. I actually grabbed the notebook I kept while following that course to help me write this. It's full of gems, perhaps I'll write more about it- but first let's focus on stress. 

According to my notes (hah) there are two kinds of stress- positive and negative. The difference between those is simply wether or not you are feeling in control. A deadline can be positive stress when it helps you finally get the work done in an expedient manner, or it can be negative stress when you're pretty sure you won't make the deadline and then it won't be helpful at all. When someone is experiencing negative stress (and aren't we all, right now?) the first thing we try to do if possible is to change the thought process about the feeling of loss of control. For example if someone has competition related anxiety we can talk through the worst case scenario, how likely that is to happen, what it would look like when it does, etc until this person feels in control again.

Sometimes this is not possible, no amount of challenging your thinking about it is going to make you feel in control of a pandemic. So the next best thing is to focus on what you can control. It doesn't even have to be related to the original subject. It helps to think about values that are important to you. Perhaps you value creativity or hard work or being dependable or caring for your neighbours. So to feel more in control you could focus on doing something that honours those values. Perhaps making and distributing awesome masks, setting up a shopping system for your elderly neighbours or even something that doesn't have anything to do with the original problem, like working hard and excelling at your job or making sure some other aspect of your life is under control- like exercise. 

 

I've always been very impressed with NF's challenge system because it aligns so well with everything I've been taught about life coaching. We think about the big picture, set big goals, then break them down into manageable chunks, which gives you a sense of control when ticking things of, which reduces stress, which makes you more likely to stick to your goals in the first place. 

What are you doing to help yourself feel a bit more in control? I'm taking action on this writing goal and we're doubling down on being as environmentally friendly as possible both at home and at the gym. 

[Scaly Freak]

Spoiler

"What are you doing to help yourself feel a bit more in control?"

 

I remind myself of this venn diagram that I actually have posted on my cubicle wall in the office I haven't seen since March 16:

 

 

I also remind myself that I have someone to lean on and that I don't have to do every little thing on my own, and that I don't have to be in control, because people I trust are willing to help me.

 

And I move around, on purpose, to help my body burn out the anxiety that keeps trying to brainwash me into thinking that controlling every single thing around me is possible and since I don't I'm a failure. The Flame is a big fat liar!