My blues name

Slightly Myopic G.Sharon Thatcher

sings the

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L H A I

R Y L A D

Y B L U E S

Just a posting to say hi for all the love on puddles site….

I’ve been feeling a bit funny because I took a slightly strange personality test.

I’m trying to write, like for about 17 years, a fantasy novel.

Before I had always started with plots. This time I’m going for characters first and let them shape the book.

I had the idea to go on the Dungeons and Dragons website.

They have this “alignment test” to see if you are good>evil or lawful >chaotic.

I came out Chaotic Evil.

So it is important for me to hear that I’m liked a bit….

check out the alignment checker for yourself.

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dnd/20001222b

Just retook the test and came out Chaotic Good. That’s more where I see myself.

Must have been having an Evil day….

evil%20santa.jpg

The day I wish there was a train ( sorry to the dad rockers)

Before I even start.

Let me tell you I’m drunk.

I usually drink or do drugs as a recreational thing.

These days.

Today I was drinking because I spent the last two days ready to burst into tears.

I have a confession.

Hi. I’m Mr PJ and I am a roleplayer.

I could say, “No! Not D+D” but recently we’ve bene doing D+D as a back to basics kind of thing to help us not confront the the reality of real roleplaying.

If you have ever read SCi-Fi or Fantasy you will have seen the thinly veiled metaphors for real life.

It is all morality soap opera thinly veiled with swords and sorcery or laser guns and death stars.

I don’t know any “good” roleplayers that are sh*t people.

It is my escape from real life. Although we deal with serious issues it is also an excuse for the boys (16-37) to shoot the sh*t and get stuff off there chest in a way that we don’t even have to talk about it.

I have been in Ireland for the last 5 days and that included Monday.

Monday in Belfast has a little club called Bar Mono which, on MOndays is Bar HoMono and I am a sex addict. Male or Female.

Out of respect for my wife I have stiffled this urge for an age. I can say no biggie, but, it has been.

I was at a school on monday teaching the kids and I swear ( and I said so to the only male teacher I met) it had a fitness quotient for staff. They were throwing themselves at me. “where are you staying?” “what on earth are you going to do with yourself for five days in the north with no company?”

I rejected all offers and avoided a gay bar where I knew I could have got some action (did I mention I love c)ck?)

Earlier in the week I had met PJ’s birthing partners daughter (stay with me) she had said that there was a night out on thursday, the night I come home. I had said to PJ Heh babe, how about it (not in a Dire Straights kind of way)

She forgot.

She thought I meant did she fancy going out with all her girly friends that night.

The night after valentines day.

The night after I had eschewed human contact for 5 days waiting for even a handshake from her.

I missed her deeply. I needed her immensly.

For the first time in my life, PJ fucking my boss included, I felt jeleaous.

All the girls were out the night after valentines day. Were they satisfied that they had kept up the tradition of greeting card companies of making the men sweat over one more aniversary to miss and were comparing notes about how shit we all were? Is Feb 15th going to be a new greeting card company day for cards?

“sorry your husband is so shit….. his work isn’t that important ….. who cares about a roof over our heads when we can have a Feb 15th shit husband day if he is away and aching for our love, our singular touch, fighting temptation like some prophet in the desert?”

Tonight I tried to find my way off the back of the HSS Belfast to Stranraer.

It is too secure. I am fit but the overhand would be too much for Chris Bonnington.

Next time, I reckon a 33mm spanner, some WD40 and 5 minutes uninterrupted and I can die in the Irish sea like my Granny’s 3 brothers.

I love PJ.

Sometimes, too much.

Not Bp just in need of a well done

So, I know I’m not BP.

How do I know this? Well it is very easy. I can trace my highs and lows to definable points.

In 1 hours time (5.AM) I have to presaent a new script.

So I haven’t slept. Nothing new for Puddlejumper but for me it was a choice.

My periods of manic activity have been the times that I have been looking for a pat on the head.

My depressions have been when I realise how far I have lowered myself to get them.

At the moment with PJ not having ANY appetites I am not getting the reassurance I need.

SO I throw myself into other stuff in the hope of a well done here and there.

This week has been a little stressful.

My bosses expect me to com eup with another 200K show.

My wife, A BP2 on new meds, has had two psychotic reactions.

My uncle is in immediate danger of dying due to a lung disease and a tumor.

I am a week behind on my studying for a good job.

Oh, and did I mention my wife is BP?

When PJ was depressed it was easier. I understand depression. I was there.

When PJ is manic. I get it…. I took amphetamine on the occasion

When PJ is freaked out on her meds….. well……. magic mushrooms….. nuff said.

I have to go now…

I have to drive 120 miles and then pitch a 200K show for 15K a year and tuition fees

And they want me to stop smoking……

Yeah right

F**K off

Whaaatt Drunnk im ah?

You Are Absinthe

You are a sloppy drunk, purposely so If drinking doesn’t make you feel crazy, it’s not any fun Truth be told, you tend to prefer drugs to drinking But you’d never pass up any absinthe that came your way!

What Alcoholic Drink Are You?

Thank You PJ.  Very Perceptive…..

My fortune cookie

My Fortune Cookie told me: You will meet a tautology made entirely of butterfly fingers. Get a cookie from Miss Fortune

Thank you puddlejumper…. I think x x

The Gerbils that ate Belfast

Thanks to one of my workmates finally getting better after being infected with a baby for the past 9 months I have to spend a large proportion of my working life in Belfast. Away from home and away from friends I thought I may as well bring my animals with me for some company. Now although I teach kids nutrition in schools another part of the company teaches about classification of animals, rainforests etc through the use of animals. I’m not entirely sad and lonely travelling around with a pair of gerbils. In truth I packed my car up with my entire menagerie, Tarantula and snake included, but it always seems to be the gerbils that cause the trouble.  Dave Grohl the Gerbil

So far I have had five gerbils. Dave (Grohl) ate the other two original gerbils. (Dave and Kurt) because they were bullying him. He escaped a couple of times leading to the moving of full filing cabinets and frantic Stuart Little type chase scenes. He also managed to eat through 2 carrying boxes. GERBIL PROOF carrying boxes.

My two new gerbils Tig and Tog (Dave having passed on to the great snake-less desert in the sky) have been a bit better. Apart form making little gerbil pyramids so that they can chew through water bottle after water bottle they have mostly behaved. But that was until they ate Belfast.

I have lived within rock-throwing distance of Ireland for years but had never visited until recently. I don’t know my way around Belfast so I can’t understate the importance of my map. I won’t use a Tom-Tom or any other sat-Nav type device as I object to being told what to do by machines. Usually my dad, an ex-policeman, would be at the other end of the phone to give me directions anywhere in the country if I get lost. “Turn right at the black bull, follow the road past the street walkers until you come to an old wino on the corner.” This I call Dad-Nav. It’s not compatible with Belfast.

I woke up last night to a familiar noise. Something was being nibbled. Sometimes this is a good thing, sometimes it is not. This time it was not. Staying in a cramped room in a B&B I had stacked many things on top of each other. I had stacked my map above Tig and Tog, the Gerbils who ate Belfast.

Who are we?

So…. Is BP contagious?I know this may sound a bit flippant to many out there but BP has a diagnosis through symptoms.

Would living with a BP I sufferer and dealing with their mood swings and their altered sleeping patterns not produce similar symptoms. Does the strain of having to be the “competent” one in a relationship leave you so wiped out that, when you are not operating on overdrive to pick up the slack during a down, you find yourself staring at oncoming trucks and wishing the steering would go?

I’m 33 and my wife is 32 and suffering from Bipolar II. I have seen a mental health professional in the past. I think I may have been a ‘little’ bit BP I in the past, which I suppose would make me lucky now. I no longer have periods of thinking I am a secret agent. I no longer think that at any moment the aliens are going to scream out of the sky as I walk down Victoria Lane past the hospital and my powers will properly develop. I still do abuse alcohol but can just have a single drink although this is a bloody hard job. I have managed to regulate my drug intake. I’m having a spliff as I write this. I still find it difficult not to roll one in the morning if there is weed there. But I haven’t gone on a 3 month long drug binge on class A, B and C’s since I got out of catering. I am still a bisexual hypersexual although I have been monogamous since last year after a ‘fuck’ binge lasting about three months.

At the moment I have had few recognisable periods of happiness over the last few months. This has been interspersed with depression and the alcohol abuse. This has been since my wife’s diagnosis as Bipolar. My cousin has BP I and we never got on. Two Hyper BP I’s in the same vicinity is a little volatile. Two people thinking that they are the most important beings in the world? I didn’t identify with her then and I still find it difficult to now. Although having friends who were undergoing treatments for other mental health problems I stigmatised Bipolar. I did not find anything out about it as I would have done with anything else I came across.

It took me over two weeks to actually start looking at BP after MrsP was diagnosed. I was scared at what I’d find out. Suddenly this wasn’t my wife, this was Mrs Bipolar. Once I’d seen Stephen Fry’s programme on the BBC I had a very small picture of what I was looking at. It was just enough to make me watch my wife hour by hour thinking “Is she looking happy because she is on an up? Am I going to have to deal with all those things on that bloody programme that lead to penury and my life being put on the back burner? Or is she unhappy because she is about to go into a depression? Am I going to be coming home every night dreading to see the pain and emptiness in my wife’s eyes? I know depression. I had thought it was depression. When MrsP wasn’t depressed, she lit up a room, she absolutely shone and everything was exciting and larger than life. I thought “this is the person I fell in love with…?”

Who is this in between person? Who would she be if she wasn’t ill? I suddenly felt then that I didn’t know her anymore. I knew I loved her. I just didn’t know who it was I loved.

I realise now that the woman I fell in love with was this same woman. I may be a little calmer now but
I’m still the same person she fell in love with. Why should it be different for her. I made the mistake of just seeing the disease. I don’t excuse myself for it but I know now it was knee-jerk.

I’ve now been learning along my wife. I follow her blog. I read some of the other blogs about BP. I know now my extreme behaviour from an early age may also be somewhere along the BP scale. I may just have been a hypersexual, alcohol and drug abusing demagogue alternating with a very self destructive depressive. J

I’ve learned to tame the highs, to put myself out of harms way, but it leaves me unfulfilled. The lows I have got a face for. Either it is a switched on “happy face” for on-stage or I go a bit robot. I had a bit of a breakdown in November but I don’t know if this was depression or was it just a natural reaction to a hard time at home. That’s why I asked the question at the top of the page. I’ve never been diagnosed. I don’t know if I just react naturally to things or if I too have a problem. Am I just alternating between sad and happy? Or is Bipolar contagious?

This journey so far has shaken my faith in what I know. What I do know is that whoever I am, and no matter where Mrs P is on her part of the journey, I know I love her.