Lifecruiser

1. It’s time to sweep out the bad sound of the words “Mental Illness”. Are we living in an enlightened time or in the Medevial time?

2. Mental illness is an illness just like any other illness and is nothing to be ashamed of - or to judge. The brain can get ill just like the rest of our body.

3. Persons that suffer from mental illness are humans just like the rest of us, it’s just that they happens to have the misfortune to inherit mental illness or develop one because of other factors trigging it. It could be you or me!

4. They need all our support not judgement, because they’re dealing with a very tough situation. They’re not getting the right help or acknowledge and on top of that without the same respect than the rest of us.

5. I grow up with a father with Schizophrenia of Paranoid type from posttraumatic stress because of his bad experiences during the war. At that time, the treatment was even worse. He got electric chock treatments too. A lot of strange things. They pulled out all his teeth and he never got any replacements. As a kid I just accepted it, as a teenager I was ashamed, as a grown up I felt sad and sorry for him.

6. A person close to me went in to a deep Physochis because of a very stressful unhappy life full of problem during many years. This person won’t recognize how bad it is and were locked in to be keept safe and got medicine. No other treatments, no conversational therapy and were let out after not even two weeks. Without any safety net. No following up that the person continue to take the medicines, nothing. This was not at all long ago. I don’t call that treatment or care, I call that human storage and careless!

7. Because of the points above, I’ve come in contact with the treatment of such illnessess, but I really don’t call it treatment. Not in this country and I suspect that it’s about the same in the rest of the world. They are sadly put aside, sometimes just behind locked doors. It’s amazing that we haven’t come further in the research about mental illness and especially the treatment! I call it a scandal.

8. I’m very chocked over the fact that they’ve begin to use a kind of electric shock treatment again. They now call it Electroconvulsive therapy, but frankly I can’t see how it could be a therapy when it’s an electrical currentis that is passed through the brain to cause a controlled seizure, which lasts for 20 to 90 seconds. They say that this procedure probably works by a massive neurochemical release in the brain due to the controlled seizure… What I hear is that it can result in a terrible memory loss that is permanent. I wonder if there really exists a sufficent documented following-up?

9. Do you know, really know what the different kinds of mental illness really are? How you get it, the symptoms, if there is a cure and so on? I recommend you to read a little about it. You may become surprised, enlightened and maybe a little frightened.

10. If you know more about it, you may discover that a person you know, probably have a mental illness or is on the way to get some. If we know more about mental illness, we can catch some cases earlier, before it get to the worst. It would be so great to not have to bring out the sharpest artillery like medicines with heavy side effects or electric chock treatment.

11. Another thing that worries me is that there is so many young people today that got panic attacks or anxiety disorder. Why is this increasing so fast? How is this going to evolve in the future? We need to learn how to prevent mental illnessess just like any other illnessess before it’s too late for the next generation.

12. Kudos to Brony at Parenting with a mental illness that started to create awareness of what it is like to have a mental illness and to show others that they are not alone. She is trying to reach 100 new people, to generate 100 comments to celebrate her 100th post. Go to Bronys 100th post and show your support by leaving a comment!

13. I send 13 billions ♥ hugs out in the blogosphere to those who lives with mental illness!

NOTE: Every comment is equally welcome, even if you’re not participating in this Thursday Thirteen-thing, we ♥ LOVE all comments :-)

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Ifound a photo of a bitter old man among my mothers photos yesterday. I couldn’t publish his photo here out of respect of any living relatives to him, but I can tell the story.

These memories goes back to the time when I was growing up. We lived in an apartment building at first floor and besides us there lived an old man (Mr Larsson) that was very bitter and sometimes mean. He yelled at all the kids playing outside and threatened them with his cane, shouting to them from the window.

He wasn’t popular and in fact so impopular that his own growned up son stopped visiting him. Which of course made him even more bitter.

He did enjoy to scare us kids. One time when the light were off in the entrance hall and I rounded the corner, he jumped forward screaming at me - I almost pee’d my pants. I was very afraid of the darkness and that didn’t make it better.

It did have positive side effects - it made me practise my singing. From that day I was afraid of going around that corner in the entrance, so I always were singing loudly, because if something happened to me, the others should hear my singing suddenly stop and wondering why. What an idea! *lol*

As a grown up I’m sure that he just wanted to “be funny” and had no thought of how a little child could react to this scare he performed. He didn’t know how to properly make contact. Maybe his own childhood had been bad? He obviously were unhappy about his life. Maybe he was envious of our lifes?

I remember the most awful smell of him. Ingrained dirt, pee and moist snuff (running from corner of his mouth) mixed to a lovely “hold your breath” kind of smell.

The few times he was nice, he gave me a pear or a little sugarfree dark chocolate. I thanked him politely, but never could eat them because of the smell of something very old and moist snuff. I went around the nearest corner and throwed it away. I can feel the smell even today…

My Mom worked in the home-help service for elderly and didn’t normally go to people so close of her own home, but since every one else always got into quarrel with him and refused to go to him anymore, she did.

It was no picnic. He accused her of stealing his money among other things, luckily she had proof of that she hadn’t. Actually she had paid some minor things for him with her own money! He was difficult to deal with, but he couldn’t walk over her. She got self-confidence and ability to bite off if needed, so he were forced to back off.

There were no wonder that he were smelly, because he never wanted to change clothes. They had to be two persons to get the clothes off him by force and then cook his underwear very carefully to get them clean.

When he ended up ill in hospital in the end, he got no visitors other than my Mom and my two older sisters. They were older than me and both worked in hospital care at that time.

He was alone at the bitter end.

His earlier life and the way it ended, really was so sad - and unnecessary. Why being such a bitter old man when he could have had a much better life than that?

I don’t know what he wanted or expected from life, but he could at least have kept the contact with his son. He could have done the best he could with his situation. Instead he actually did choose to have this miserable alone life.

He was the total opposite of my Mom. Yes, he did have some difficulties in his life, but not even half of what my Mom has suffered and she is still laughing, despite the fact that she now is more ill than he ever was.

We all have a choice to do when it comes to our own lifes. The one that suffer and lose most from a negative attitude is the one that’s keeping that negative attitude.

No one is going to serve you a good life on a silver plate.

YOU are responsible for your own life, to make it worth living. It’s as simple as that. Or hard, you choose!

I won’t end up alone, bitter, with ingrained dirt, pee and moist snuff, regretting that I didn’t live my life the best way I could!

♥ I LIVE, ENJOY… LOVE… LIFE!

NOTE: Every comment is equally welcome, even if you’re not participating in this Monday Memories-thing, we ♥ LOVE all comments :-)

Fact is: I had a blast yesterday! Tired today from all the love. Or was it the champagne….? Spoiled rotten all day, from morning to morning! No wonder my smile is so big it’s up over my ears by now :-)

Thank you dear blogger friends for all your fantastic birthday wishes for me, a lot of them came true and I can’t think of any better birthday.

Well, OK, if I were on a trip around the world would be better actually, but…. I’ll keep on dreaming about that and it will come true eventually. I’m a true optimist!

That goes for the aging thing too. Yes, I’m growing OLD. I’m 47 years OLD now, but that doesn’t bother me that much. Never had any 30 or 40 crises and won’t have any at 50 either, Im sure of that.

It’s because of my personality. I’m a realistic person out in the fingertips. I see reality and adjust to it in the best way I can. I wanna make my life the best I can.

It’s my own responsibility. No one else will serve me a good life on a silver plate.

♥ I LIVE, ENJOY… LOVE… LIFE!

[Together with Mr Lifecruiser, no need to say]

My Birthdate: October 5
I have many talents, and I’m great at sharing those talents with others. Most people would be jealous of my clever intellect, but I’m just too likeable to elicit jealousy.

Progressive and original, I’m usually thinking up cutting edge ideas. Quick witted and fast thinking, I have difficulty finding new challenges.

My strength: My superhuman brainpower
My weakness: My susceptibility to boredom
My power color: Tangerine
My power symbol: Ace
My power month: May

What Does Your Birth Date Mean?

These “blogthings” are quite meaningsless reading, yet we are attracted of them. Why?

Partly it’s because we love ourselves, to hear and read about ourselves and especially when it’s good things about us. Who wouldn’t be flattered by the above statement? Come on, superhuman brainpower? *lol*

Maybe if it was saying superhuman ♥ lovepower I could believe it…

So I’m not only going pink, I’m also going 74, but it’s actually feels like 47… Or was it the opposite…?

NOTE: Every comment is equally welcome, even if you’re not participating in this Thursday Thirteen-thing, we ♥ LOVE all comments :-)

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I remember when I worked hard. With IT. It’s so hard to believe, but I spent 20 years of my life on IT! 20 years!

Climbing the career stairs from bottom to the top of my capacity.

1) IT helpdesk operator.
2) Working in IT project to develop new systems.
3) Helpdesk Manager for the new systems.
4) Helpdesk Manager/Technician for IT Network.
5) Remedy Application Developer.
6) Server Management.
7) IT Project Manager.
8) IT Consultant.

I was beginning to feel burned out. Then my back stopped me about 5 years ago, just like that, in a middle of a project and I’ve not been working since then.

I remember working too hard. There were no limits in my efforts. Working all the time. A lot of overtime. Coming early in the mornings, leaving office late in the evenings. Or working from home in the end when they did begin to allow work from a distance.

The competition were tough. You were forced to keep yourself up to date with all the news in your expert field and a lot more around that. The rules were tough. Your co-workers very tough. A lot of intrigues and unfairness. It’s no picnic for sure.

Yes, the salary was very good, but you had to work like a dog for it. In my opinion, it’s not worth it. It’s no life. The back problems gave me time to stop and think about my life, which I did. Before that everything were just rolling faster and faster.

Now I have a life and I will never go back to that kind of life no matter what. If I begin to work again it’s not gonna be at the same work. I’ve learned my lesson what’s important here in life.

Love, humans, family and friends, that’s what’s really counts.

That is the Life I want to Cruise.

Goodbye for ever professional IT Life!

NOTE: Every comment is equally welcome, even if you’re not participating in this Monday Memories-thing, we ♥ LOVE all comments :-)

1. My nicname is Baldie Hawn. My going bald thing is going fine thank you! Meaning that I’m still loosing hair, but not in the same amount as earlier, but I still can’t notice any hair growing back either. And what do the Doc say? Nothing! He won’t even take new tests to see how my lack of iron is going. He doesn’t find it necessary he says. I soon find it unnecessary to have a doctor.

2. The same doctor recently wrote a doctor’s certificate for my back problems for one more year. I’ve been ill for 5 years now, struggling with chronical back pain. Now they say one more year to go and the second big investigation and maybe rehabilitation has to wait in the line for a couple of months. And he thought I sounded dejected and found that very remarkable. I find it remarkable that he found that remarkable.

3. I’m so happy that I don’t have a beard! But I really wish to get rid off all my other body hair though. I’m so sick and tired of shaving all the time. Why wasn’t it all that hair that fell off and not the ones on my head? And no, stop shaving is no alternative here, I find it GROSS with body hair. Waxing is no alternative either, mostly because you have to have some hair to pull to do the waxing and I don’t want to have that stubble at all! I want to get laser beamed… Hopefully not by aliens ;-)

4. I almost never watch TV. I’ve switched it for blogging, which gives me more than that brainkilling programs they send. When I recently accidently did watch, it was about nudists and a man that’s exchanged his wife with an crocodile… That convinced my once more!

5. I need to have two brekfasts. One light first and then a second one an hour later. I must eat very often or I’ll get too hungry and feel sick. This also means heavy nightly snacks. Which means that I’m building up even Mr Lifecruisers beautiful body with a manly belly (paunch)…

6. I’m eating some pills from the health food shop now, with (among other things) a lot of B-vitamines in it, to make my hair grow back, which makes me even more like a hungry monster than in normal cases. Now the hungry monster climbs the walls of desperate hunger. I have noticed that my claws nails are growing faster - not any monster hair yet though. And Mr Lifecruiser, the poor man, has to be watching out to not be eaten alive! He do feed me a lot, but just out of pure survival instict! To keep me nice. (Wrooooar!)

7. We had a lot of plans for August and September, to do a lot of things, to go out and have some shorter road trips and other things. Nothing of this has been possible. We’ve both been ill several times in several ways, several other persons close to us have been having problems of different kinds. And here we are - still at home! At the time when we get more healthy there going to be winter over here and then we definitive won’t go out. We’re in hibernation over the winters.

8. In fact, we’re having trouble to get anything going or done. We’re dead tired. No, not old, don’t say that! Just worned out. Even to cook dinner is like a big event over here, but that is kind of essential…

9. We don’t get to the grocery store for weeks… We do invent new meals this way, based on what we actually got at home. We hoard like maniacs when we do go shopping, so we don’t need to go for a long while. Meaning that Mr Lifecruiser have to carry a lot of bags when we finally do, because I’m not allowed to. Which makes his back protesting.

10. Sometimes if we run out of milk or something more basic, we have to go to our nearest little neighbourhood store. It’s name is Favoriten, but really this is no suitable name! Even though I do appreciate that it’s there for us, we call it Snusket. Translated that means like Dirtyness.

11. Now, about dirtyness…. We’re practising our own housekeeping methods, so our home is never presentable enough to invite people here. So we’ve become hermits.

12. Our near and dear ones can tell us anything, we won’t be surprised any more. It has happened so many things the last couple of years that we actually feel a bit blasé about everything. We don’t even raise our eyebrows when some one tell us something, that normally would have been very exciting or disturbing or whatever, but now it just leaves us with an: “all right and now what?” Because there is always a continuation….

13. Sometimes I get the feeling of that the whole world is strucked by the bad luck curse. There seems to be so much more bad luck of every kind in this world nowadays than I experienced it like when I was younger. I never heard about all of these kind of bad things, anxiety and other things that I hear of nowadays.

Has it increased or is it only a coincidence that we experience here? What do you say about it, did you experience things much more peaceful and uneventful around YOU before?

♥ LIVE, ENJOY… LOVE… ODD LIFE!

NOTE: Every comment is equally welcome, even if you’re not participating in this Thursday Thirteen-thing, we ♥ LOVE all comments :-)

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Can you have Alzheimers in your ears?

In that case we’re suffering from a severe Alzheimers. Recently we heard them say on the TV that a documentary program should cover about the Alzheimers disease, which we really wanted to grasp some information about. (For obvious reasons….)

So we sat down to watch it. Surprise! The program was about something completely different: Nudists!

Now, that wasn’t really what we had in mind, it is quite a different subject from Alzheimers. Though I must admit that I stayed and watched. Getting puzzled WHY this people wanted to go around naked all the time and everywhere. I still don’t have a clue.

I mean, it’s not like we have the warmest climate over here in Sweden, so you don’t exactly get too hot either. The nudists in the program also stated that it wasn’t for sexual reasons. So I still wonder WHY? Are they all exhibitionists? The program didn’t at all clear the reasons for me. I don’t think I’ll go further with this investigation, just state that we really have complicated minds sometimes.

Then again we heard them mention that it would be a program about Alzheimers and thought that we just had picked the wrong day earlier.

So we sat down to learn a bit about Alzheimers. Surprise! The program was about something completely different: Different Pets!

Also that quite different subject from Alzheimers. Though I must admit that I, once again, stayed and watched. Getting puzzled WHY this people wanted to have those strange pets. But this time I have a clue. Made me sad though that it’s needed. There is simply not enough love and human values in our society.

The worst case in the program were a man (not in Sweden) that had a Crocodile as a pet. He kind of had replaced his wife with this crocodile instead. OK, maybe his wife had been worse than the crocodile, what do I know?!

He did everything with the Croc. (Well, I don’t know about THAT, but everything else for sure). They slept together, bath together, watch TV and all sorts of things. To me, he looked lonely though. Had he given up on people? An outsider.

Outsider also is the name of the TV program which we (twice!) heard wrong as the word Alzheimers…. The two words aren’t exactly that alike are they?

This is a very common behaviour of ours too. To hear something completely different than what’s said. No, there is nothing wrong with our hearing, just the connections in the brain. Especially in the mornings, you should hear our breakfast conversations!

We get to see programs though that we never would have, I admit that…

Either we are the real outsiders or we’re cases of Alzheimers. Or maybe both?

I’m not talking about the other Scarlett here, who was “Gone with the wind” even though I was gone in some sense. No, this is about another kind of Scarlet Fever that striked me in the autumn 1968 when I was 9 years old.

At first it looked like an ordinary cold, but as soon as the red rash came on my chest we knew instantly that I’ve got it from a girl I had played with. Some parents weren’t so orderly, so they let out their sick children to play, which started an epidemic of Scarlet fever.

Some strains of group A streptococci cause severe infection and may lead to shock, multisystem organ failure, and death. Scarlet fever is one of those. Early recognition and treatment with antibiotics are critical. Before the antibiotics it had a mortality of 30%.

The effects of the disease were considerable, a throat infection could spread and become a bad abscess, ear inflammation or meningitis without treatment. Afterwards you could get rheumatic fever, kidney inflammation and heart muscle inflammation.

When I got it in 1968, it was not as feared as it was earlier, beacause they had begin to treat it with antibiotics. I was just in the last group that were sent to hospital to deal with it (unluck for me!), after that you were allowed to stay at home to cure it. Very often you have to treat the whole family anyway.

There were no children pedagogy used there. They were quite terrifying in their manner. My Mom didn’t want to leave me there, but had no choice. There were many children crowded there since it were an epidemic hospital and we were all kind of left on our own, which created a little bit too wild environment for my taste.

I was there for a long time, no one remember exactly how long. A couple of months probably. My family came to visit me, except from my brother. He was under age 15 and wasn’t allowed to come. Very strange restrictions indeed.

When you had a visit and they brought you candy, you didn’t get the candy from them, you got it afterwards. That was probably one thing they did right, because they took a bit of the candy from us that did get visitors and gave it to the kids that didn’t. At least we hoped that it was the case, since it disappeared a lot of candy before we got it!

The only treatment I got were antibiotics. I also remember that they did take blood samples from me very often. I got so used to it that I still prefer when they take it from my arm and not from the fingers.

I didn’t seem to get well there. I’m not surprised. I didn’t like the crodwy and loud environment, the way they speaked (not!) to me and above all: I didn’t like the food and especially the dinner time. No nurses had time to spend with us, we should eat on our own, the food was not warm enough and it was very often fish or something else I didn’t like.

I was used to my Moms excellent cooking and getting warm meals and loving care too. Besides that, we all know that sick children don’t have the best appetite and could need some coaxing…

The most important thing: no one controlled if we really did eat or not. Which I hardly didn’t, but what did they do? They gave me vitamin pills! Did they help? Not much. Which made me way to skinny. I remember my weight: 24 kg (52 pound) and I was rather tall already at that age.

My siblings were teasing me when I finally came back home again, they called me names like “The Biafra child” (starving population in Nigeria) because I was so skinny. Like a skeleton they thought.

What a difference from the childrens hospital of today! Like night and day difference!

That hospital care have been with me for many years after that, because I was there just before the time I started to grow tall so fast and my body never got the chance to build up some fat, so it wasn’t until I was over 30 that I got more normal skinny.

I do have problems right now to maintan and gain weight and that’s no picnic I tell you. It may sounds heavenly in dieting peoples ears, but it really is hard work just as it is to keep a diet - just the opposite! You get so tired of it.

I didn’t know that Scarlet fever can be spread to animals, but I just read in one of our newspapers, that the Gorilla baby Enzo in Kolmårdens Zoo has been fighting a virusinfektion and Scarlet fever for a month now.

Other from that, I haven’t heard anything about Scarlet fever for many years now.

I have no idea how common it is nowadays. Do you?

NOTE: Every comment is equally welcome, even if you’re not participating in this Monday Memories-thing, we ♥ LOVE all comments :-)

Awesome fellow bloggers.

We’re standing before you as very proud Lifecruisers tonight. Our hearts are full of love and a never fading believe in blogging, our heads with sleeping problem since it’s 04:50 in the morning in Swedish time.

We have spoken to you, to the whole Blogosphere about our crazy lives. We have defended our honor and won peace and bloginality.

We dare to say: “Blogosphere, this day is the new beginning for all the blogger people, we have built a bridge of understanding through the blogosphere that is blog solid.”

It has been a great pleasure to participate this evening and to hear all the heartwarming things that have been said about bloggers and therefor also about the blogosphere.

We want to thank all our regular readers for all their support during our blog year, without it our blog would not be alive today. You have stood by us despite our sometimes in your eyes probably very strange posts.

We want to give big bear hugs to our special voters who believed us being Magickal: Tricias Musings, Yellow Roses Garden, Are We There Yet, My Two Cents, Maremagnum, Patchwork Anahata and The Foo Logs.

We also want to thank our Emmy Award Host Mysterious Lady for a marvelous event and for all the extra work she has put into this.

For those who didn’t won tonight I just wanna say, that you all deserve it too, so I’m convinced that your turn will come!

What the Blogosphere mean to the world is obvious to all of us, especially to those who was participating tonight.

We know that without our blogs, without blog posts to comment, we’re nothing. Gone. Lost in cyberspace.

In real life on the other hand, we’re all very nice ordinary people :-)

♥ Congratulations to all the other winners ♥

We’ve been nominated for a Blog Emmy Award!

Quite surprising - and touching. Who would think of little Lifecruiser? And as a Magickal Website too. That’s a huge compliment. It was our post about our Magical Iceland trip that did it.

There is a lot of good bloggers out there, so there really could be a lot of Blog Emmy Awards competitions too - it’s fun, it’s free - what more could we demand?

The voting is still going on - thank you from the bottom of our crazy Swede hearts to the ones that already have voted for us - we love you too :-)

We did put on our Emmy outfits (from the 18th century) and are now just waiting for the outcome.

Ready to shower the winners with the good old champagne - Dom Perignon - what else? Oh, and I do have olives hidden all over my outfit, just for pure survival…

But no nervous wreck biting nails over here, I’m calm as a dead woman at her own funeral.

Wait a minute… Maybe I am dead and that’s why I have this terrible migraine? I haven’t had one for about 4 years, so maybe this just is a kind of phantom pain? It sure feels like my head is cut off…. Uhum…

No, it’s probably because all the problem I had to vote myself. I don’t like voting generally. I like too many bloggers! I don’t like the idea that it seem like I have cut off the others I didn’t vote for. Which I haven’t. So I had big problems to choose and voted late.

So, if you don’t find that I voted for YOU, blame it on that damn migraine!

See if you find some one you wanna vote for, hurry up to the mysterious lady that started it, the voting closes at 6 p.m EST Sunday night!

Oh, and don’t forget to have FUN :-)