In case you cant tell, I love to add photos to my posts. It makes everything so much more happier when there is something to look at, dont you think? This time I decided to show off this little guy. I bought him a while ago when his hair was properly green and nicely cut. Now that he has aged by at least 3 months, he has turned a bit grey and I think I need to cut his hair. He still makes me laugh every time I look at him, because no matter how bad the weather is, he always keeps on smiling! Which reminds me of a saying that is posted on the psychiatric outpatient clinic at the hospital: I smile when it rains, because when I dont smile, it rains anyway.

This work week has not been good. This is not exaggerated, I had a massive nervous breakdown, which was as embarrassing as it sounds , after I was called into the chefs bureau because of my work hours. It really served no purpose other than to set me off. After I couldnt settle down afterwards, I was called in again and he told me to just forget it all. Form your own opinion. This was also the point when I decided that I might really need to go to court to claim my rights back. We will see.

No word yet from the social services because of my disability card. Maybe this week. I also have another appointment at the skin outpatient clinik on Tuesday. Important. It really always is.

I really enjoyed Confessions of a Prairie Bitch. I enjoyed Alison Arngrims talking about working on Little House On The Prarie. Who would have known Mary Ingalls wasnt quite a lovely in real as she was on the show. I also really liked how she dealt with the problems she had while growing up (parents, sexual abuse and so on). Of course as we know, you can package everything really nicely, it still is what it is and maybe would she have written her confessions earlier, these chapters might have looked completely different. Nevertheless, as I always do, I love to hear from other peoples lives and how they deal and live. I gave it 5 stars and recommend it to everyone!

My next read is yet another Fitzek book. I think its my fifth, I really enjoy this author a lot. He writes psychological thrillers. Splitter is really good. It is about an experiment that makes people forget their traumatic memories rather than deal with them. I am not too far into it yet, it might just turn and turn and turn some more along the way.

Who gave in at the Back To School Threadless Sale? I did! And it only took a week tor the T-shirts to get here.

As always, have a good week and take care everyone!

Tuesday I had my clinic appointment. We decided to cut down on my meds until we can think of something else (not that we have many options left…). I told the doctor that I just have no luck and she replied “well you are lucky you have me!” I thought that was a nice thing to say. Of course with the lesser dose of Ciclosporin A my skin started to turn for the worse very fast so I went up again. I just cant handle terrible skin anymore. I will see what she says next week.

The week went by horribly slowly. I spent my afternoons in bed, I could do nothing but sleep. As the weather was quite bad, I didnt miss too much. I need to write another paper soon and I have some exams coming up, yikes.

Friday I finished “His Dark Materials and I very much enjoyed the books. Especially part three is really good. As I already posted on Goodreads, I especially loved the concept of Death being born right along with the New Life. But because death is such a big taboo it hides throughout our life and only appears when we are dying. Whereas in this other world, people befriend it almost immediately and always have a good friend in “it”. I loved that idea, plus a bunch of other things. The triology is really worth reading. A nice inbetween read where you dont have to think constantly. It did take me a while to get into it though. But the idea behind it, I love. I also watched the movie in the meantime, they did quite good. Although I still think movies destroy ones fantasy.

Saturday was quite nice. The weather has finally turned sunny again, so a friend and I went up a city mountain, just because we could. So lovely up there. Nature is a nice thing. We wanted to go on pilgrimage on Sunday, but I was so unmotivated. Bummer. Its a little church up a mountain and its so lovely up there. I used to go there a lot when I was younger, with my Mom and friends. I figure we will go eventually.

The Sunday I spent reading almost the complete Alison Arngrim Memoir, I love it! I will finish it in a bit. She is quite a person, too. Oh so strong, really smart and with a good heart, thats important.

So much for the last week. I-Pad progress: 65 saved, 535 to go.

Also, through my friend Violet I found out that Alison Arngrim published her memoir in June, called “Confessions of a Prairie Bitch“! Sounds unexciting until you find out who that is (ok, the book cover gives it away). NELLY OLESON from Little House On The Prairie. I hardly ever buy Hardcovers because they are always too expensive, but this time I didnt wait and ordered it. The book has brilliant reviews all the way through and who doesnt have fond memories of watching Little House On The Prairie? I know I have a ton. I cant wait! I am going to write a review once I am finished, but I can already say: go and read it! A good person.

Tomorrow is Ikea catalog day. Ewww. Heavy. On Tuesday I have a control appointment at the hospital. Important.

Dont forget yesterdays entry The Ufo That Flew Away.

Having gotten that off my chest with my parents always in my heart… I like to find things around the house that was theirs. To see their handwriting, things that were created long before I was born. As we are decluttering the house, we are finding things here and there. I especially like the really old stuff from my Dad, this is one of his french notebooks. He had lovely handwriting, none of us nowadays is writing like this anymore:

I fixed some of the errors in this theme and will continue to fix the rest over the next couple of days. I always hate the last 5% because these are the hardest errors to fix.

Yesterday we went to see Hugo von Hoffmannsthals Jedermann. We didnt get to see the Jedermann that is part of the Salzburg Festivals though. Because for one getting tickets is close to impossible (reserved for the rich and famous ) and second way too expensive. So we went to the cheaper version, which was quite ok as well. At least we saw it.

If you are wondering why my recent photos are of such bad quality, its because I lost the cable to charge my camera and now I have to take every photo with my Iphone, grrr.

The knitted UFO is now finished too, see it above in the stream or on FlickR, click me.

As you can see on top, I am in the midst of reading the last book of His Dark Materials. I actually like the last part best so far. Must go back to continue reading. Bytheway, I actually really like this version *starts drooling*, is this a different version? Or this one, hmm.

Have a good weekend everyone!

Today I had this stupid medical exam that I blogged about last time. It went OK. Nothing more. The doctor clearly had no idea about atopical disorders and hadnt even looked into my files before I arrived. *so pissed* They send you to a doctor by free choice and not by who is best for which area. I was sent to a regular practitioner who is specialized in Chinese Medicine and Homeopathy. O_o Just my luck. They use a percentage system to grade your disabilities. You get a sum of percentages for the main medical problem and for everything more that makes the main illness worse you get additional. She said, due to the amount of strong medicines that I am taking, she will give me the maximum for the atopical eczema and the asthma but another doctor will look at my file and he or she can then downgrade me again. Its so complicated. Now I sit and wait. I need 50%.

I got my hair cut on Friday, short! Pretty short… I also watched the complete 6th season of House. I hated the ending. Didnt make any sense.

Its been over 7 months since my last entry. I never intended to be gone for that long and there would have been SO MUCH to tell… But there is lots of time to tell about it in the future. I actually really enjoy to read over my past entries and thats one of the main reasons I am so eager to blog again, to be able to read of how life was a year ago and what progress I made and where I am still stuck as ever.

We had a lot of baby bunnies over the last few months. We should have got the big bunny fixed in time and as we didnt, we found three babies in the cage about 6 months ago. They must have been dead when the Mommy delivered them. A while later, I came back from a hospital stay, looked in the cage and there was a nest with three babies, all alive! I took a billion photos of them growing up and some will decorate this entry. The three are about 4 months now and are doing excellent! About a month ago, our female bunny delivered another 5 (!) babies but died shortly after the delivery. That was really sad. We tried to save the babies by handfeeding them, but after a week, one after the other passed away. I felt so incredibly guilty for not doing more, but really, their chance to survive was minimal right from the start. So now we have four bunnies. Nine would have been totally insane!

One of the main themes on this blog is definitely my skin. After 10 weeks in the hospital in the last 12 months and countless visits to the outpatient skin clinic (weekly for the longest time, than every 2 weeks for even longer, sometimes even twice a week…), we finally have my skin under control, for now… They even sent me to a clinic in Munich which is specialized in atopic disorders. We are out of treatment options and I have been on experimental treatments over the last 8 months. I am signed up for more experimental treatments and studies at the AKH in Vienna. Its an insanely long story. If you are interested, I have my own thread at an atopical exkzema board: This too shall pass. In German though.

Because of all of the sick leaves I had and will have, I am going to try to get a disabled person’s identity card, Behindertenausweis in German. The biggest benefit of it would be, that I am practically irredeemable and thats SO important. I am so close to being fired and that would be that worst thing that could happen right now. I have my medical exam next Monday. I need a 50% handicap to get the important benefits! The doctor in the hospital said that I should not worry about it at all but I am dead worried. So glad when thats over!

We are also in the midst of decluttering the house. There is so much that needs to go but at the same time you want to hang to so many things… not easy, but we really need the space. We have thrown away 100s of kilos over the last 2 weeks. More to follow.

More in the next few days. To end this entry on a good note, another bunny photo:

:innocent_tb:

Last week I celebrated yet another birthday. It was an odd day. We (brother and I) really did try to make it a good day, but it is just so apparent that people were missing. In the evening my friend and I went to the Christkindlmarkt. We drank Punsh, ate roasted nuts and I bought turtelly things: a Turtle Christmas Ornament and a Turtle Cookie Cutter. That I found turtles everywhere that evening I took as a sign from above, thank you. My friend drew turtles on blue bedsheets for me, an incredible idea and I love it to death. So much work. Another year older, certainly not any smarter.

The day before I had my, what seems already regular weekly appointment at the skin clinic. Skin was so incredible bad that they wanted to keep me there yet again. The skin really is a mirror of the soul and in my case probably a mirror of my way too busy life, too. They put me on new immune-suppressants, ones that are not even allowed for the treatment of skin disorders yet. They had someone take photos of my complete body and once again I had to sign something because these pills wreck your blood. Think pink.

I had a presentation on Tuesday which went solala. I put a lot of effort into it, I made handouts, and used the overhead projector, much more than the others did. In the end I totally threw my nerves away and wrecked it. The professor was really nice though and said “see, you can do it, last semester you didnt finish the course because you didnt believe in yourself…” So nice!

I also got my first payment under the new work contract. I got 50% less than everyone else. A rediculous amount considering it included the Christmas bonus. Again trying to think pink. The whole world is pink!

This past Friday a nurse said to me that she hasnt given up on me yet. This means so very much to me. Someone else believing in me when my whole life seems to break into billion pieces.

Today, I baked Turtle Christmas Cookies. They are simple lemon cookies with lemon-sugar frosting. They were so much work but they didnt turn out that great.

Turtles and fun Tshirts make me happy. Good thing for turtelly Tshirts on Threadless!

I will keep on trying. Never giving up ever, even though at times I am so very close.

I hate to spend so much of my very hard earned weekend with Uni work. But I always have to remember: No gain without pain! One day it will all have been worth it.

And, of course, I played around with an Aquarium Simulation on my Iphone. So addicting…