Shout, shout ... Let it all out

There is something very special about Songs from the Big Chair, and I wouldn't have thought of it until Matthew asked me today if I wanted to listen to it. Of course I do! He currently loves this album! So uplifting at a time when I need it!

This album is from 1985, and my sister sang along to it before she could talk. It was adorable. The special memory I have about this album is a camping trip to Bowen Island with my parents friends Ron and Jan. Jan had made the tape and given it to us, and the song list was in her handwriting, not my mom's.

I think this is a fabricated memory, the timeline doesn't seem right, maybe they weren't on the trip, but we had the tape? I don't know.

I loved Jan, and she once took me on a date with just her to see The Fox and The Hound in the theatre and dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory - I would have been 5. It was on that Rowan Island trip if I recall, that it was the first time I had seen barnacles eat. Fascinating! I can watch that kind of thing forever. The ocean is a happy place for me.

Once I wrote a letter to them, I would have been very young. We didn't know their address, and my mom just wrote the approximate location - Ron worked for Canada Post, so they got the letter!

In 1992 I went on this Canada 125 student exchange trip to Toronto, and I was able to visit Ron and Jan who had moved away there several years before. Even as a 15 year old it was a priority for me to see them while I was there. My visit was cut short by our agenda and I would have loved to stay and visit more. That was the last time I ever spoke to them.

Songs from the Big Chair on Spotify

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It has. been a bad week. I know no one reads this so I can just be honest about it. My mental health is very poor and I am what I describe as "Manically Depressed" This is when I am obsessed with my symptoms and feeling panicky and hopeless, sick and emotional. I texted to someone on the crisis line early this morning. Jeanne helped me calm down, mostly by reading into her textbook responses. At first I thought she was AI, until she made a typo. Sometimes you need an outsider to listen with empathy. I am very candid about my illness, but it is hard to describe or be calmed down at certain times in my cycle. And it is such a bunch of bullshit I hate asking anyone to listen to it. I should make it clear that I am in no way suicidal. I am just feeling mentally and physically shitty and fretting about it rather than doing the things I need to do it make it better. Because those things are hard and require motivation and when I have no motivation I am not able to push myself. Instead I self soothe with sleep and food, and I worry and wander around in a daze, confused with my head pounding and mind racing and unable to focus. Welcome to Laura's pity party despite my privileged life.

Yesterday was my worst day, and today wasn't much better until I started mixing paints. I made colour after colour for several hours. Then I arranged them ROYGBIV and I hugged the bin for several minutes. I know that is ridiculous, I didn't even realize I was doing it at first.

I get struck by ideas and sidetracked, so after I mixed paint, I went to weaving scrap paper. I never throw scrapbook paper etc away. I honestly will make a card based on a piece of scrap paper that I want to use. I am trying to make interesting things for the back side of the bookmarks I am painting. Then I came up with the idea of putting pressed flowers on the back, I pressed a whole bunch of things this spring and summer. Then I thought it would look neat if I mounted them onto music. I had saved a bunch of choral music samples that were going to be recycled, and so I did a watercolour wash in several colours on a few pages of a two-part Brazilian love song. I generally only selected foreign language pieces. I used some metallic water colours and it has dried very prettily. The flowers will hopefully look lovely, or I can just use the paper on its own. Which just made me think that I can also use the paper I made earlier this year from my paper I pulled out of my recycling bin (mostly Matthews discarded homework). Yay!!