First things first: I'm back home. It was more of a spontaneous flounce than a planned decision in the end, but I do not regret it. The time to leave had come.

Completely unrelatedly, D has lent me his TV. He doesn't really need it, see, because he doesn't have cable or anything and uses his computer monitor to play video games. It's possible that I'll be allowed to keep it for a pretty long time, so now I suddenly find myself wondering whether I should buy an XBox 360 instead of a tablet PC. You know, presuming that one of these days I'll actually manage to hold onto my money for long enough to buy anything expensive. e_e

The thing is just, he could also lend me a PS2. Then I'd be able to play one game and watch DVDs, which would be a huge improvement already. But on the other hand, the manufacturer of the tablet I've been wanting has recently released a relatively affordable BIGGER one that I want even more, which would be almost as expensive as the XBox, so I'm kinda thinking if I'm going to spend that much money anyway, I might as well add another €50 and get the XBox, enabling me to play SEVEN games PLUS the PS2 one. On the other other hand, my computer sucks so much ...

Naww, I think I'll go for the tablet. Considering the "free" PS2 and all. I could get back into gaming by replaying Star Ocean 3 once or twice, enjoy my ability to watch DVDs, be ecstatic about owning a tablet, then get the XBox later.

YES. GOOD. Now I only need to decide if I want to try living on €100 next month and buy it immediately, add my savings and make it €140, or be sensible and wait until the month after that, setting as much as I can aside for this plan.

... Is living on €100 for a month even hard, though? I forgot how much money a person needs for groceries while I was getting free food at the hospital ...

Surprisingly, I can already check into the hospital today. I'll be gone for a while, then - unless I get so bored that I start posting from my phone. I'll probably stop by every Saturday again like I used to, though.

I think the Cymbalta is doing something, vague as it may be so far. I haven't been experiencing less pain exactly, but I seem to feel less exhausted after activities that would normally knock me out for an hour or two. I mean, I can just sit down for 15 minutes and then start the next thing, or sit down for five minutes and do something small. That's pretty cool. And since I've only been taking it for five or six days, it can't even have gone into full effect yet. Who knows what it's going to be like after two weeks!

I haven't noticed any side-effects, either - the first two days or so I was very tired, but that's stopped now. Oddly enough, the disturbingly realistic dreams I'd been having since I started my other meds have stopped, too ... maybe the Cymbalta is somehow cancelling that out. Or it's coincidence, IDK. You never know with these things.

In other news, I'm sleeping at home tonight. I'll spend the weekend doing laundry (because it's so warm that I keep having to change shirts and ran out early), preparing the place for my return and also preparing for something else, namely the fact that on Monday I will hopefully - finally - install the curtains and stuff that I bought almost a year ago, with help from my mother. I sure hope she doesn't, like, break a leg until then or something. I WOULDN'T BE SURPRISED. >_>

My mood is alternating between happiness and panic today, which is rather irritating. Especially since there's nothing to panic about and it'd make more sense for me to still be sad or angry about ... that thing that went wrong two days ago. (Nope, not elaborating.) But I've never claimed to understand my brain ...

I cannot resist coming back here every Saturday even though it means that I have to spend every Sunday around the hospital because you're only allowed to leave on one of the weekend days. There's just always something to do here, to bring or take or whatever, and it's nice to be able to catch up with internet stuff at least a bit once a week.

This time I've been oddly busy, though, and probably won't be able to write a second post ... unless I keep this one really short and basically start right now. IDEK how that happened.

But what else is there to say, anyway? Oh, right. The sudden exhaustion thing did turn out to be a side effect of my allergy meds, somehow - I don't know why it took hours to occur, but the fact that it stopped when I started taking them at night looks like a pretty obvious connection to me. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if they actually help when taken at night, though. :|

By now I have discovered the library and ergo therapy is finally happening, too. I'm pretty busy overall.

So! About this hospital business. I'm currently only home for a few hours; they don't seem to allow people to stay away overnight until the 4th week or thereabouts. I can't believe it's been more than a week already, but at the same time I can't believe how much has happened, either. There's ... a lot less boredom overall compared to the other place, though I suppose being able to read books has more to do with that than it being a better hospital. Still holding out judgement on that (honestly, no opinion yet).

Speaking of books, I finished Tiassa and the Inheritance Trilogy, which was loads of fun, and am now starting on the ones that I got for Christmas from my family. At first I was skeptical, but the story's slowly getting interesting. I love when circumstances motivate me to stray from my usual genres! Next week I'll also attempt to check out the hospital library (which might be difficult because it's only open for a really short time on two days).

In case you're wondering how it came to be that I left in such a hurry all out of the blue, let me try to remember. I hadn't slept in who knows how long when that happened, so the details are a little hazy now, ahem. -_- Well, I may have mentioned that I had to call them once a week to confirm that I still wanted to come ...? And last week I nearly forgot, in part because I'd expected to only have to do it twice, not three times, and the rest was confusion about whether a new week had already started or not. And inconveniently falling asleep on my chair. So I didn't do it until Thursday, but on Thursday they happened to have a free bed, and thus the nurse advised me to just screw taking all of my clothes with me at once and go there by train. I got very nervous, said yes, looked up a train, discovered that I had no more than four hours to get ready, spent four hours doing so in a slightly panicked state ... and left. Nearly missed the train, too.

I'd been extremely productive the night before, which was great because it meant that I left a mostly clean and unusually tidy flat behind. Being greeted by that sight was so awesome when I quickly returned to get the rest of my stuff the next day - or whenever that was. I even happened to have snacks on hand that I could take with me, and something to eat for lunch on both days! It was almost as if I had sensed that it was time to get ready. The only downside is that I also bought bread, which is now over a week old and may not be good anymore. :|

Uh. I am freezing (evidently the heating takes ages to start back up once it's been turned off for a while) and need to take a break from writing to re-orient myself, figure out what else I want to do while I'm here and how much time I've got left, etc. There will probably a locked post on ~feelings~ later.

A recap of things I have learned since my decision to go to that hospital in Hamburg:

- it's where my father used to work
- our old house is directly next to the hospital grounds
- that entire street was in fact reserved for employees at the time
- the ward is not just for women after all
- I'll actually be surrounded by people with similar problems for once
- getting there by train is a lot less expensive than I thought
- it doesn't take as long as I thought, either
- my mother's workplace is only 5 minutes from there by car
- there's a McDonald's nearby
- McDonald's sells cupcakes
- I really want to try some freaking cupcakes

(What?? CUPCAKES. :P Inspired by the realisation that they used to be practically unheard of in Germany until a few years ago and even now they're still tricky to acquire. My research also brought up an actual cupcake bakery in Hamburg, but sadly it's in a completely different area and kind of hard to get to via public transport. Quite close to where I used to attend group therapy, though! And it already existed back then. D: If I had but known ...)

So basically what's happening here is that I'm starting to think of the whole thing as this big adventure - against my own better judgement. Hmmm. The preparations aren't going very well, but at least my MP3 player is ready now. That's a start.

At the very least, my list of what needs to be done before I leave is taking shape. It'd be better if I could already have started working on it, but ... it's something.

I can't even reorganise my MP3 player yet because I don't have much music on this computer. I'm waiting for a call from A, who will hopefully drive me to the next bigger town again sometime this week, and then I'll buy a bunch of things including towels and an external harddrive. Possibly even a mouse because this one's driving me crazy ... well, crazier. Once I've got the harddrive, I'll take it over to Daniel's and FINALLY GET MY OLD FILES BACK. Wow. Then I'll spend a few hours agonising over which music to pick, heh. ;)

Come to think of it, there is one thing that I have already done - I bought some cheap underpants while I was grocery shopping on Saturday, since you can never have too many of those. Especially if you're planning to be away from home. Somehow I also feel like I could use more socks, which is a little weird seeing as I believe none of the ones I acquired during the summer have fallen apart yet. Oh well. You can't really have too many socks, either.

It's kind of funny how I'm still worrying about the same things as last time. Not even my headphone situation is ideal now: I'm going to feel stupid sitting around wearing a headset, though that certainly won't keep me from packing the thing, and when I'm outside ... well. I could use the earphones that I bought during my last hospital stay, but they're not exactly in top condition anymore. Maybe I'll find cheap but slightly better ones at the same store where I'll be looking for a harddrive. :S

As for non-underwear clothes? I'm trying not to think about it ...