A surprise at my supermarket

I couldn’t believe my eyes this evening when I saw that my supermarket was selling “new items”: Milka chocolate. MY chocolate!! 

The chocolate that my parents have been sending me by mail from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean for the last 8 or 9 years. Yeah, I don’t like Hershey chocolate; I can’t get used to it – so I make sure to avoid everything made with Herskey chocolate. It doesn’t taste like chocolate to me. My parents don’t like either. It’s not the kind of chocolate one can find in my country.
Of course, I bought a bar of this chocolate (but first I took a picture of the chocolates and sent it to my parents). I haven’t tasted them yet. I’m scared that I’ll have a bad surprise with this Milka chocolate sold in the U.S. Maybe it’ll be like Nutella and Coca-Cola.These products have a very very different taste whether you buy them in France or in the U.S. It’s a bad bad  surprise for French people who visit the U.S. and realize that they’ll have to do without this soda during all their stay in the U.S. for the simple reason that they really really don’t like the taste of the American Coca-cola.
So, I’ll see tomorrow if Milka chocolate tastes really like Milka chocolate. It would be so awesome!

It’s not always easy

From “Stuff No One Told Me”

OC87

“Can you make a movie while having mental illness? Bud Clayman is doing it.
Will making a documentary about your mental illness change your life? Maybe.
Mental illness interrupted his dream of a filmmaking career. Thirty years later, he’s making the movie of his life. Bud Clayman is one of films’ most unlikely heroes. This is a personal story with universal relevance—a wildly original documentary of pain and vulnerability, empowerment, and Bud’s quest for belonging.”

OC87: The Obsessive Compulsive, Major Depression, Bipolar, Asperger’s Movie (that’s the title of the documentary) will be released tomorrow in selected U.S. theaters and I plan to see it in Hartford, CT in June.

To watch the trailer or learn more about this movie, just click here!

A little help

One of my friends (it’s not that have many friends, actually I just have two friends) told me that she’s been seeing a psychologist and that she’s been following a cognitive behavioral therapy for several months now. It really surprised me because if you’d asked me, I would have told you that this girl is living a dream life. It proves once more that I am wrong about people and that despite the fact that I imagine that people are happier and better than me, it is not always the case.  But I guess, we all think this way because we don’t know everything about people and they we all have our little dark secrets and most of the time we think that we are the only one on Earth to have problems. On another hand, I sincerely think that we all have once in our lifetime a good reason to see a psychologist/psychoanalyst/therapist. A little help never hurts. It helped me, why not her or you?

The to-do-list

I used to do exactly that when I was suffering from clinical depression. I needed some kind of positive feedbacks somehow/anyhow and I found out that by checking at least one thing on my to-do-list, it was rewarding and positive no matter what it was. It was done. It did me good. …and I can tell you that getting out of bed when you have depression is an achievement!

This week

I finally went to a free full-body skin cancer screening that was offered by the Skin Cancer Foundation’s Road to Healthy Skin Tour.  I was a little worried because I have a couple of what I would call ‘abnormal moles’ and it turns out that I was right. Actually they are ‘atypical moles’ but not melanoma yet. Yes, “yet” because these atypical moles are one of the most important risk factors for melanoma. So, if they change, that won’t be a good sign at all but the dermatologist who examined me didn’t prescribe me a biopsy since these moles haven’t changed for years. Anyway… It was a very thorough exam and I left with some coupons and sunscreen.

I received my birthday presents with six days in advance. My parents didn’t want me to miss my birthday, that’s what they sent their parcel very early; and well, we never know with postal services… we may have surprises. Did I tell you that once, my mother shipped a package (one of those sold by the post office) to me and four days later SHE received her own package?!  My mother was worried that a present wouldn’t survive the transit so I had to open all my birthday presents almost a week before my birthday. She was scared that the frame of a picture would break. She reproduced the photograph of our neighbor’s cat in France. I love this cat. Capucine. She always looks like she’s thinking “tu m’ touches, je t’ bouffe” which means something like “you touch me, I kill you”. ^.^ And if you want to put her to the test, well, you’ll regret it because she really means it. ^.^ She’s a cutie. So, back in December my mother was complaining to my father and me that her friends who go to painting lessons with her are asked to do paintings of this and that from members of their families and that she isn’t. Therefore, I asked her to paint Capucine. “It’s difficult to paint a cat!” -_-  but she did it anyway and it’s a very beautiful painting*, faithful to the original photograph. And, no, we don’t see on the picture Capucine’s deadly look; instead we see her belly we can’t touch, no no no!

*It’s in “my photos” in the right column.

Positive things of the week

1) Yesterday, as the weather was gorgeous, I walked for two hours on a trail.
2) I had a glass of ginger ale (the first glass of soda in more than a year) but I didn’t enjoy it much. No risk to crave it. That’s good. :- D
3) I still try to review all the good things of the day right before I fall asleep.
4) Isa invited to spend a week-end at her new apartment in Boston.
5) I sent flowers to my mother for Mother’s day. It was a surprise for her since today it is Mother’s day in the U.S. but not in France yet. Mother’s Day is celebrated later this month in France.
6) My arms look great. No trace of acne. I’m soooo happy. They haven’t looked like this for decades!
7) I saw for free Dark Shadows, the latest movie with Johnny Depp.
8) Since the free skin cancer screening I went to was canceled (I found it out once there), I registered for another skin screening and this time, this one is close to my town.