I just found out....

[Izzy_*now*]

::handing Izzy a beautiful brown haired doll::

Merry Christmas, Izz.

Lighter

Awww lighter!

You are just so sweet, and she has just the teeniest amount of gray, I see. Just like I have
Merry christmas back
love
Izzy

[lighter]

(((((Izzy)))))

Just the teeniest amount of gray: )

Light

[Nonameanymore]

Hi Izzy,

I wasn't flippant about what you wrote. I do too score an intermediate schizoid and schizotypical and I use to score intermediate histrionic too but somehow in the meantime I gave up the romantic fantasies... So I am more a basketcase than you are
The comments I wrote were copied and pasted from the test site - there were too, one of them with true or false too.
I am sorry if I sounded flippant again.
I guess what I really meant was don't just stay at labeling yourself...

Rania

[Izzy_*now*]

hi Rania,

Oh no. I never once thought you were being flippant! I laugh at myself a lot, if people feed me the right straight lines.

Oh wow! You are schizoid, too?

I didn't pick up on that, as I took one test where Paranoid is (always?) at the top of the list and the rest followed in average percentages, and with my percentages. For the first time I noticed schzoid was high ranking, but left it alone--never knew it was me, 'til now  and (it's been a long time) but Paranoid was at the top of the list, not rank ... last time too, so...well I have my share of paranoia... and took it to be my answer and dismissed it.

This is best I've felt about myself since....well, forget the since!

Thanks
♥ ♥
Izzy

...just another 2 hour nighttime nap and up again.

[sKePTiKal]

Ya, those kinds of answers help don't they Iz?

If a person knows there's a name for something... that just might really apply to them... it helps point a person in a better direction of "what can I do about it now", right? The thing is, to remember that the description of tendencies and habits isn't a life sentence - and we're waaaaaaay more complex and able to change over our lifetimes - and of course, that's never included in these tests or descriptions.

I just read, by way of example, that a lot of $$$ was spent on a study that determined that teenagers could actually raise their IQ by actively studying and taking tests on their understanding of the material. In other words - educating themselves made them smarter. Well DUH... I thought this was basic assumption behind all educational theory!! Time on task & all that. Practice makes perfect... Yeah, I know it was also assumed that people had one range of IQ the duration of their lives, too. But it's like folks missed the neuroscience connection between those two assumptions, to me: when a part of the brain is exercised repeatedly... the skill-level gets better and more automatic and will eventually impact other related brain tasks... which is generally described as "smarter".

I do think that what we are at birth... and the FOO situation we're born into... is just the basic of box crayolas - raw material - and what we create with that is up to us. Some of us just take longer and fuss over the details more than others.

I didn't always think this, tho.

[Izzy_*now*]

Thanks PR

Yes, I needed my label to see that I at least fit in somewhere.     Knowing now that I do, I can see, as my life had progressed, where I was too naive to make changes and kept up the same old, same old, not learning anything.

I can also recognize a "once was me" but was something I fixed. The 'qualifications' just give me a guideline of why, and YAY! my life is written up on the Internet!!

...learning the areas as to where to mother myself (being that who/whyever I was, I thought would be me forever.)

Onward  !!

Love
Izzy

[Izzy_*now*]

Just a favourable note.

My car is working well now after that "fashioned battery clamp" discovery, by Chrysler, for me. (OH I just want to hug little Vu).

I mentioned to him, the first time that my car was brought out of the shop, that it was parked too close to another on my driver's side to be able to get in on my own. He moved it for me.

This second time he remembered and saw that the mechanic of my car had parked it 'normally' again, and he said he would move it for me....I hadn't even noticed that it was out of the shop!

So today after parking for shopping, I returned to my car to see that a Monster Van (stickered) had taken up about Two Feet of my parking slot's space. I was going to go to Mall Management and have his License plate announced, as being parked intrusively into another's space, but I changed my mind, knowing that if someone held my driver's door open, so it wouldn't annoy the Hell out of me by not being able to 'lock' in an open door position, and keep bouncing off my 'chair all the while I'm getting into the car (which would make me like to rip it off at the hinges) I would feel better about myself and have someone else feel better about "helping ol' Izzy".

Well it worked..stopped a man, of course, thinking he was about my age, and in the process he said something about his 72 year old mother----oh gee, I'm 72....I wonder what she looks like if he looks my age?

Still floatin'

Love ♥ ♥ ☺ ☺
Izzy

[Izzy_*now*]

I feel so "UP" that I changed ny name to "Skits"

I am a new person!

Can any of you understand?

♥    ♥    ♥     ♥
Skits

[sKePTiKal]

Yep; understand completely! There are transitions - this time, for you - a definition that "fits" and feels right - that just scream out for a whole image revamp, including screen name changes.

I'm taking this a bit further - IRL. I'm slowly but surely losing inches (trying to ignore the weight and just getting my body fit & trim)... getting more energy by eating better... and since, when I look in the mirror all I see is how much I look like my mom and it's mostly that my hair is all a drab not-quite-white, too... Halloween is the last day I'm going to look like that!! I get my hair professionally colored on Tuesday; nothing drastic... just not this stark, albert einstein-ish, wicked witch dirty white color anymore. Besides, times is tough for small businesses... and the guy who's doing my hair is really, really good (and a grandpa - so we have generations of history that we've lived thru together)... so I'm investing in him & myself at the same time.

I'm also trying some new kinds of clothes... new silhouettes...experimenting. Just because I've got an AARP card, doesn't mean I don't care how I look... or don't care how I feel because of how I look!!! (gosh, that sounds kinda feisty... but it does matter to me.)

You know how some folks get all this energy in the spring? Fall is when it hits me. I'm cleaning out, purging, "spring cleaning" my whole house... and when I walk into the rooms that are "done" it feels like I've just given myself a nice present. I might even decorate for Christmas this year - just to enjoy it and change things up a little.  AFTER - I clean out that closet and donate some of the decorations for the folks down Hatteras way who lost everything, including for some 2 dozen folks, the house itself.

What are you up to, with all your new energy?

[Izzy_*now*]

Well PR,
That was great!

After pegging myself, and choosing a new name (or some before but all mooshed together) I had also found the cause if why my car was draining my battery steadily. Now I can count on my car as I did before. I stopped taking pain pills for pain, as the were for pain, not against pain, and now the pain has receded, but now and again take an Arthritis pill. I sleep 12 hours/24. I did shopping, laundry, therapy, bath, washed hair, cleaned a tall boy's dresser's drawers and had 2 days free before next therapy, which was today. That is some change! .....re energy!

I am 72½ and I attach my brown hair, as of last Christmas, all natural colour---- but my mother was like this at 86 when she died, in 1994.

Stopping the pain pills, has also stopped the weight gain, the all over body-fatigue, plus drowsiness that would find me sleeping at my computer desk!

I'm coming up to my one year of no-smoking, after 54 years of smoking (but just scarfed down a small pizza) and will take everyone as is, but will help those I can, if asked, and not always expect that every "down-face" I see is because of something awful that I have done!

My therapy  is paid by the Insurance Co. still or will be after claim settlement, and Karla really needed a shoulder today re her N in-laws, so we did some therapy and then talked for 1½ hrs.

Sometimes it's only ONE best friend we trust and need!

Thanks
PR

Love
Skits

[sKePTiKal]

Man! That's great your hair is still this color. I look like I saw a ghost back when I was 12 and have been haunted by it, ever since! LOL... my first noticeable gray started when I was 17. If it were all consistently that color, I might be able to just roll with it... but the back of my head is still mostly the original color. So it's like a punk-rock hair-color experiment that went really bad when it grew out, you know? And then there's the mom-look-alike issue... that's just mostly more of an annoyance; an irritation and since no one around me where I live now has any idea what my mom looks like... well, I guess I think it shouldn't be a big deal. Some days, it isn't.

But the other thing, is that I used to FEEL old - not caring, giving up, doing my best imitation of being depressed, powerless & helpless (la-la-la... not speculating on whether it was real or not; it was temporary; that's all that matters now) and well, self-limiting. Because, mostly, my kids were grown... or supposedly didn't need a full-time mom anymore... my job was just a substitute for needing to be needed... (tho I still miss a lot of those relationships; I enjoyed the people) and I just didn't feel as if I deserved to really enjoy or "have a life" after being mom. I was sentencing myself to a premature decline, you know? Because I looked older than my real age, for one thing. Because I didn't have any built-in boundaries about self-harm, self-sabotage... because I'd been programmed to think there was something morally and socially "wrong" about immersing myself in "my" life - and finally being able to give it my undivided attention. All those things.

So, changing the hair color for me, is like changing a name. Or getting a tattoo!       It's just a symbol of an inner change. A life milestone. My D still insists that one day, she's going to give me a tattoo... whether I want one or not!! Maybe I should swap her out as my HPOA, after my hubs... she could accomplish this goal while I'm incapacitated...  LOL!!!!

[Izzy_*now*]

hi PR
There are about 5 different natural colours --close to black underneath, med brown otherwise with highlights of blond and red, plus my gray.

I grew it long because I was in and out of bed so much I would have been styling it all the time. Most 'older women' go for short, but I am being my eccentric self. My mother's hair was also this colour brown with a little gray, when she died at 86, but she wore the "old lady's bob". She seldom smiled so her nouth was an arc downwards on both sides, I decided to wear a smile at all times. However when she had been "arranged" she looked 40.

I still feel young, as I just never 'grew up', I expect, yet I am a responsible adult (I think.)

Skits

[sKePTiKal]

Then, you'll like some of hubs' sayings (we kinda wish he'd published these a long time ago, since we keep hearing them in weird places now!) -

Just because you grow old, doesn't mean you have to "grow up".
You don't have to stop playing... just because you're older; you get "old" when you stop playing.

Which must mean, I'm ancient! LOL... right now, I'm in another "git r done" phase... my "value" based on how much I accomplish... my enjoyment coming from the fruits of my labors. But I have learned - finally - to pace myself better.

[Izzy_*now*]

Ah PR! old sayings, GREAT!

I can use all mine and no one has heard them before (well lots of them, not all.)

[sea storm]

Hi Skits,

I like your new name and will try to get used to the change. There is something liberating about changing one's name. Especially if the old name is associated with feeling like an unloved wreckage on the road of life.
On the other hand it seems that you are jumping on the bandwagon and defining yourself as mentally ill. If the description of Schizoid PD is ok with you and helps you navigate your life then that is nice. However, it does seem a tad judgmental. A lot of feminist therapists are suspicious of the PD label as it is usually very wounded women who get labelled this by doctors who don't have the skills or time to deal with the underlying pain and the very real issues.

I must be schizoid too.......... I like to be alone now and I read and read.

Love,
Sea storm