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Is anyone up for a chat?

Doolhof
Champion Alumni
Champion Alumni

Hi Everyone,

Sometimes it is great to have a place where you can just have a chat about something not related to your mental health. So here is the opportunity to have a general chat about anything and to maybe find a "friend" to help make the day feel brighter.

Occasionally I connect with people on the forums and a lovely  friendship develops, but it may seem to others that they are not welcome to join in the conversation. This is not the case.

So here is an opportunity for new friendships to happen.

Maybe you would like to share your favourite holiday destination, or place you would love to visit. If you could have any animal as a pet what would it be? What is your favourite flavoured ice cream?

For me right now I would love to be somewhere warm! We have been experiencing some rather cold weather where even the chooks water is freezing over during the night! Somewhere with a beach and warm sea to swim in would be lovely!

My favourite ice cream flavour would be Jaffa in one of those crunchy cones! I would love to be eating one down at that tropical beach paradise followed by a lovely fresh coconut and maybe a beach massage as well.

I will be dreaming about this as I drive around today for work listening to Meatloaf. Maybe I should be listening to The Beach Boys instead, but I don't think I have any of their music on CD.

Hope you all have a great day,

Cheers from Mrs. Dools

 

 

161 Replies 161

geoff
Champion Alumni
Champion Alumni

dear Mrs. Dools, hi and it would be very untoward of me to welcome you to the forum, as you have been a consistent and vital person responding to help many other people with depression, so your contribution to this particular site has been limitless, so you're a well deserved member of Beyond Blue.

However I don't feel as though you are feeling well at the moment, and pretty lonely, or as you say 'to help make the day feel brighter', so firstly it's a real concern for me in particular, just as it would be for other members, but there are problems for yourself, such as on 6/7 you said ' Light at the end of the tunnel!'

I also feel as though you are missing something in your life, that you dearly want, and I do know that we all have this, and our achievements are not met, but that's us and not you, and I do love caramel ice-cream, puppies and roses. Love to you Geoff. x

 

Doolhof
Champion Alumni
Champion Alumni

Dear Geoff,

How very perceptive of you! My mental health journey this last year has been a real roller coaster ride! Since December I have needed to be hospitalised twice as my depression has been so overwhelming I have literally fallen into a heap.

But a bit like that song "I get knocked down but, but I get back up again" that is what I have been doing. I'm hoping the new medication I have now will do the trick and help to balance me out.

Yes, there are a few things missing in my life that some times make me feel so empty and sorrowful, like not having children and having a husband who is so distant most of the time.

I do try to make the most of each day, but like everyone suffering from a mental illness knows, sometimes the illness has more control over us than we would like!

 I keep soldiering on. I do have friends I can connect with, just when you are so depressed it is not always easy to do so. That is where this forum is so wonderful. It enables us to keep in touch with people no matter what time of day or not we connect.

So you like puppies, I think any baby animal is cute, but puppies are really so sweet aren't they. I enjoy living herein the country and watching the lambs frolic around in the paddocks.

Do you have roses in your garden Geoff and do you have any favourite varieties? I like the Mr. Lincoln, the perfume is delightful. I have one called
Just Joey" to remind me of a dear friend named Josie who was like a second Mum to me. She also loved that rose.

One of my favourite flowers is the orchid. On a holiday to Singapore we went to an orchid garden and I took hundreds of photos (well almost hundreds!)

I had wanted orchids as wedding flowers and a friend was going to provide them for us. We happened to have a massive hot spell before the wedding and all the guys orchids carked it, so I ended up with carnations! Ha. Ha. He only told us the morning of the wedding that the flowers had all wilted!

Thanks for your very caring thoughts Geoff. Cheers to you from Lauren

 

WendyPendy
Community Member

 Hi to you both,

It is definitely cold at the moment but I don't mind it. I rug up and make myself take my two dogs for a walk no matter what the weather.

I love flowers to and I have signed up to do a flower arranging course next week which I am looking forward to, well mostly looking forward to doing,you know what I mean.

Hope you are both doing okay this morning.

BKYTH
Community Member
G'day one and all.  At the moment I am 'listening' to my favorite antidepressant - Beethovens 9th Symphony.  Nothing that comes in tablet form has ever helped so I tend to find what heart there is at the heart of things with music amongst other things.                                                                                                                                                        My mothers favorite plant was Azaleas and so it is also mine. If I could have a garden I would fill it with herbs and have an area just for Lavenders - There are so many varieties apart from those you commonly see.                            I love cottage gardens so if I want to visit one I put on the music of some of my favorite British composers and find myself transported into the meandering hills and dales of an English landscape.                                           Loneliness is such a common factor for those with mental illness's although its sting is felt by all as we balance the joy and pain of being alive.                                                                                                                                                   If I could go overseas I would go to southern Spain as I have played Flamenco and Classical guitar all my life and Flamenco, which has many cultural influences in it, took form there. I planned to go when I was young but psychological issues took me to very different places and so I had to learn what I could from recordings.                I agree Lauren. Its nice to be able to come to this site without the emphasis being on mental health issues. It can be quite demanding trying to offer something that may be of use to those who make posts.                                         I'm afraid my knowledge of ice cream is pedestrian at best - Chocolate or Vanilla serves my purpose when it arises which isn't very often but I like Chai. I grind the spices myself according to the various recipes I have. The variations are endless and therefore so are the experiences to be had. I've created some recipes myself. In reality there are few rules and most of those can be broken. In India no two families would make Chai in the same way.                                                                                                                                                                                     Beethovens 9th has just finished and now I'm listening to his 7th and 8th symphonies. Adieu. Philip.                                                                                                                                                                                           

Hi Wendy Pendy,

Lovely of you to join in with the chat. I usually enjoy the winter, but this year it seems so much colder for me for some reason. I too enjoy getting out for a walk to help warm myself out. I went out the other day with so many layers on it was hard to walk. Ha. Ha.

I do a lot of cleaning for the elderly so they can stay in their homes longer. I take some out shopping as well. One lady has her house so cold I am thinking one morning I will find her frozen solid. Even after vacuuming and mopping frantically I still feel cold in her home.

Many years ago I attendee a flower arranging course and loved it. It was so amazing how arranging the flowers in different styles made you appreciate the flowers so much more. I hope you really enjoy the course.

Recently I picked a large bunch of white daisies from our garden to put on the table. They looked glorious, but gee they have an unpleasant smell to them! I had to put them outside where we could admire them through the glass sliding door!

I've had a very busy day. My husband is watching the cricket, so I will have  abit of social time "Chatting" with people here on the forum.

Hope you have a good day and enjoy the weekend.

Cheers for now from Lauren

 

 

Doolhof
Champion Alumni
Champion Alumni

Hi Philip,

Thanks for a really interesting post with so many different topics to contemplate.

So what are your favourite ingredients for the Chai that you make up yourself? I can well imagine the combinations could almost be limitless and would depend on personal choice and maybe the availability of ingredients for some people.

Earlier this year we visited a lavender farm and I was a little surprised to learn just how many different varieties there are. My mind has forgot the number now, but there were certainly many. Unfortunately the weekend we chose to visit, was the weekend after their main harvest, so we didn't see the garden in it's full glory. They had 6 acres of various lavender plants.

I do enjoy some classical music but I have to be in the mood for it and do not know the name of my favourite pieces.

I also enjoy some of the CDs that are made with a combination of music and the sounds of nature.

Being able to play a musical instrument must be such a  pleasure, to be one with the music you are creating. I feel a little like that while I am splashing paint onto a canvas. I would like to attend painting classes but just don't seem to be able to find any evening classes and my work interferes with day time classes! Ha. Ha.

Water is something that soothes me. Even the stormy ocean pounding against the rocks covering me in spray or the stillness of a pond. There is something about it that feels healing and calming.

Thanks for sharing Philip.

Cheers for now from Lauren

 

 

 

BKYTH
Community Member
The guitar has been my companion, my friend, and my voice reaching back into the dawn of my memory - I cannot remember a time when it was not there. I can still remember the smell of my first instrument, the smell of the lacquer - It was a crude instrument but then so was I as I approached it and began my journey into the possibilities that were available to me if I were to make the effort.........................................I make that effort an over many years the instrument revealed itself to me. It still does.                                                                                      I must admit that I have to approach classical music cautiously. There is much solitude in art, so much that remains unspoken, that has been denied a listener - Elgars Cello Concerto (Which he described as "a mans attitude to life") is such a piece. I approach it at my peril. So I must be ready for the encounter.                                                                                                                                     I too love the sound of water. It "sings a song" as I once heard it expressed and that is not wrong, but for me, I find such an utterance reductive and mundane. The sound is to ancient for language. It existed before there was anything to speak of it - It is primordial and beyond description. Your words are appropriate and are as much as I could speak of it myself.                                                                                                                                                           Philip.

Doolhof
Champion Alumni
Champion Alumni

Hi All,

Last night we had a long and steady shower of rain. It sounded wonderful on the roof and was very calming and soothing. For some reason as a child I always found the sound of the rain on the corrugated iron roof to be relaxing. Maybe it was because it drowned out the sound of my parents yelling at each other during the night!

This morning the garden looks so refreshed, cleansed and alive. I will wander down to the back garden later to see if our small dam managed to contain any of the rain. We might not have had enough for their  to be sufficient run off.

I also enjoy the sounds of the frogs down at the dam when we do have water there. It amazes me where the frogs come from and how they survive between the rains.

You were mentioning the guitar Philip and how you feel so connected to it. As a child, my parents use to care take a huge old stone house that was only used during summer holidays. We would assist my parents to clean up the house after the bats, bees, possums and rodents had been busy while the house was vacant.

Inside the house was a very old piano. The house was dark and dank after having been shut up for some long. I used to like playing the heavier notes  (not at all musically inclined to know what key they were) on the piano. The dark, empty, lifeless sounds seemed to resonate around the house.

It was always refreshing to leave the house and run down to the near by beach in the sun and feel the warmth and tangibility of life once again.

Memories are interesting!

Cheers from Lauren

 

 

 

Hello Lauren and Everyone

I have found this winter to be quite cold. I hope it means the summer will be mild as the heat and humidity is quite enervating. But then I do live in Qld.

My favourite flower is the hyacinth. It has such a beautiful fragrance and I love the way the tiny flowers grow and cling around the stem making one huge flower. Sadly Qld is too hot and muggy for this favourite, although I have tried many times to grow it. My favourite tree is the Jacaranda. The blossom arrives before the leaves and there is this glorious blue/lavender colour mass crowning the top of the tree. As the flowers drop off they forma a lovely carpet of blue under the branches and look like a mirror image in water. Fantastic. Just realised the two plants have similar colouring so maybe it's also my liking for blue.

I always wanted to learn to play the piano but for some reason my parents did not allow it. So I used to go and 'play' our piano in the front room. I have since had lessons. The guitar was another instrument I wanted to learn but did not get round to it. My sons both play as do my eldest granddaughter and grandson.

Lauren you congratulated me on my 1001 post but I notice on this post I have apparently only written 994. Very odd, but thanks for your congratulations.

Another major love is music. Very keen on classical music. BKYTH, did you listen to the ABC Classic FM countdown of the 100 favourite swoons? I was very surprised with some of the entries, but thoroughly enjoyed the weekend when the 100 were played.

Until I moved to my current home I have always had pets. Cats and dogs usually but also guinea pigs for the children and goldfish. I keep saying I will have a dog as they are such wonderful companions. Then I would need to take it for a walk which would improve my fitness. Still procrastinating.

Thanks for the invitation Lauren.

Cheers

Mary