My Nest

Living here, the things that keep me sane are small things. My world of safety and comfort has narrowed to a very few things, but if I cannot access or have one of those things, then my world teeters dangerously on the edge of the ever-present pit.

I need little: my husband; a constant supply of rice and ikan bilis [little fried fish] with peanuts; adventure and hidden object games; access to the internet; and my nest [my own room]. I have been interested to watch as my world narrowed to these things over the past 18 years, and interested how little I need to stay happy. Technically, I never need to leave my house, barely even my nest. And, yes, I have in the past year had flashes of agoraphobia. Like the depression, as I watched it approach, I can see how easy it would be to tip over, how tempting to let go, how dangerous to feel that way.

My weekend routine has become important and I do everything I can not to interrupt it. Interruptions for me involve anything that takes me out of my nest. I am not happy when I have to leave the house. This is what I look forward to with increasing longing as Friday nears to signal the weekend:

I get up on Saturday between 6:30 and 7:30 [I hope that changes when I retire]. I dress in sweats and a t-shirt, grab the morning paper [the Jakarta Post has competition for the first time, but I haven't seen it yet], and move to the hot and cold water dispenser. This is a great invention. We bought one for our San Antonio house. Waiting for me is a white porcelain mug, one of a set of four we bought in Perth. Skip has already put the Equal, the Coffeemate and the Nescafe in. I add boiling water, stir, and head upstairs.

I read the paper in Skip's nest so we have a little morning time together. I read bits of news to him and make an effort to read slowly. My mind is focused on getting into my nest. When I open the door to my room, I feel as if I have reached a safe haven. Safety from what? Not sure, but I feel the relief, as I close the door behind me and head for my computer chair.

I power up my computer. Right now my desktop is dying and I am using my beloved laptop. Not ideal for longterm use, as I bought it for traveling and its smallness does not make for great comfort the way my room is set up. But it works. I turn it on and also the desktop. While I am using the laptop I let the Webshots screensaver run on the larger computer and it gives me an everchanging picture to look at. The pictures make me happy and were chosen for what they evoke: happiness, serenity, awe at the beauty of the scene.

While waiting for the laptop to set itself, I change the calendar date. Skip gave me a perpetual calendar one Christmas, a ceramic Chinese dragon holding four small ceramic cubes with days, dates, and months. The first thing I do everyday [every afternoon when I return from school, every weekend morning], after starting the computer, is to change the dates. It gives me the feeling of moving forward to a time when I no longer have to count days to when we leave.

I settle into my chair and adjust the pillows that keep my back from complaining too much about hunching over a computer for long hours. One of the pillows is a dark green and white needlepoint given to my husband by my mother and the other is a squishy pillow, given to me by my sister-in-law, with Eeyore on the front. Sipping my coffee, I load my game manager for bigfish games, open Mozilla Firefox, enjoy momentarily its skin [aeon clouds], and open four tabs: bigfishgames, gmail, facebook, and my blog.

I check my mail and admire the new gmail theme, I have chosen: beach. Every morning I watch the sunrise; during the day it may be sunny or overcast; in the evening I watch the sun set; and at night sometimes I see a moon. On the beach, at different times of the day I see a flip-flop, a beachball, a dropped icecream cone, suntan lotion, a baby turtle...I look at my facebook and send a plant, coffee, or good kharma to my children and friends, and answer any messages. Sometimes, like this morning, I write a random thread. I might, as I am now, check the progress of a game downloading from bfg.

With the routine well underway, I go downstairs and make myself a bowl of rice and ikan bilis for breakfast, bring it back upstairs and settle in for the day. During the day I play games, punctuated by checking my mail and facebook. I may check Google Reader and spend some time catching up on tech news; I may look at the two blogs I follow; I may visit Amazon to see what games are for sale; or Gameboomers to see what games are coming. Every so often, I leave the room and say hello to Skip, who will be checking his gmail, chatting to Forrest, and playing WoW.

If I can do this all weekend, I can make it through another week.