Perspective

Mr H's (and my) 17 year old niece, who lost her mother to cancer aged 48 a couple of years ago, recently dumped her boyfriend "because he is horrible to his mother. I can't be with someone who doesn't treat his mother well".

My mother often drives me to distraction. She imagines conversations, she dwells on things (real or imagined) for weeks, she says 'I can't' when she can.  I know it's not her fault that the neurons are aging, but sometimes I dread her phoning, having imagined I said or promised something, or to ask me about a thought that's been worrying her. Some days she's got her old spark back and is on the up, others she's lost and vulnerable, and I find it sad and difficult.

Our niece is amazing; she is strong, beautiful and funny (just like her mother), she and her brother are a real inspiration. 

When I'm struggling with my parents getting older, feeling impatient with Mum and worrying about what's going to happen in the future, I have to remind myself that others wish with all their hearts that they had both parents to worry about...

Seething in the shower

I have been seething in the shower, about various things.

About my ex-brother-in-law who is borderline-something, and takes it out on people I love.

About people who complain that the fact they live in this beautiful place is awful because of the tourists and the house prices.   Do they not realise that the tourists keep it alive?   And that they do have a choice to move elsewhere?   Hey, move somewhere cheaper and ugly and unpleasant, would you be happy then?  Cake and Eating It springs to mind.

About people who say they have no choice. Everyone has choices.  There may be things or particular circumstances that we have had no control over, but we all have a choice as to how we handle them, or react to them (are we back to 'change what you can change, accept what you can't'?).  

I could say that I have no choice about staying in my job because I need my salary to pay the mortgage. But I could re-mortgage and halve my monthly payments and get a lower paid job, if I chose to.

Yesterday I castigated myself for mentioning something that then provoked comments that annoyed me.  Should I just keep my mouth shut today? or should I purposely provoke 'discussion' and risk my blood pressure?

Spontaneity and settling down

Well, that was a different weekend to what I had planned!   as you might have gathered from my previous post, at 4.30pm on Friday I got a text that Mr H was on his way home - and he had only decided to come two hours previous to that - a real spur of the moment visit.  

He says he drove the 450 miles to see me, but I know the truth - it was actually to see Django ;-)   Anyways it put all my plans of spending the weekend studying out of the window, but after the emergency washing up on Friday I did manage to get some reading done before he arrived.

We had a lovely homey weekend of dog-walking, veg patch digging, visiting parents and just chilling together.   It certainly got rid of the gloomy mood I'd fallen into - it was going to be 8 weeks between seeing each other and that was just proving too long. 

Four weeks is definitely the optimal gap.  Two weeks is too often because there is no settling down time.  More than 4 or 5 is too long and missing them desperately sets in.   Just the day and a half he was here this time was enough to top up the batteries.

After he'd gone I went to the garden centre to investigate vegetables as it's time to be planting seeds.  So now I have some sown outside, and some indoors. My kitchen table has been moved around to create an indoor greenhouse space.   The four 'sticks' are not vegetables, they are wiggly willow cuttings.

We do have a greenhouse, a very small one 6x4 - but it's full of stuff and in dire need of a sort out. A job for another fine weekend!

This evening I phoned my brother-in-law and his wife (what does that make her, a sister-in-law-in-law?) to tell them that I'm not going to The Family Wedding in two weeks time.  Oh, he says, haven't you heard the date has changed now?   What a shambles, first it's rushed through because of visas expiring and now it's been put off because of some other legal hiccup.  For heaven's sake - well whenever it is, I can't come.

Anyway I ended up having a long chat which was good, I'm looking forward to being able to drive 2 1/2 hours comfortably so I can go and visit them, and my sister too. 

On the Scottish front, I don't think I told you that after Mr H's interview he decided that the new job would be too big a step this soon, and that he didn't feel remotely ready. So he was pretty relieved when he didn't get it, and so was I because I'd been kind of thinking the same thing. Not that ambition to get on isn't good, but it isn't everything.  So all that has settled down and he can throw himself into his current job and get more experience until the right opportunity comes up.  

My boss asked me the other day whether I was thinking of moving to Scotland one day.  He's another Scotland lover but he said he knew exactly what I meant, and felt exactly the same, when I said 'Not at the moment, we both like it down here too much'.   

If anyone asked me, right now, that favourite interview question "Where do you see yourself in five years time?"  I really don't think I could give a definitive answer. 

Meet a new friend

Well everyone, let me introduce Cliff. 

Yes you can guess why he's called that can't you?  Yes another abandoned furry thing, left to get cold and wet, on the clifftop this time.

He's had a bath, and a tumble dry, and maybe I'll give him a carrot to knaw on later.. after he's finished reading the chapter on Freud.

Django and I walked quite a long way this morning, the cliff path (after the paved bit finished) was a bit muddy so we picked our way at a strolling pace.  The sea on the shingle below was so soothing, at one point we stood and shut our eyes and just listened to it, in and out, in and out.

This afternoon I went with my friend G to see the pony that she looks after two days a week.  She's a piebald cob mare, about 14.2hh, and very easy to handle.   I love the smell of stables, and horses, and hay. It makes me miss my riding days whenever I smell it.

Feelgood Friday - an attempt!

Well after yesterday's rant, and the fact that no-one told me they were re-booting the server at work this morning so it hung in the middle of my remote login, I am trying to shift myself from Grrr mode into zen Feelgood Friday mode...

1.  As I said yesterday, I am now cleared for driving short distances.  I can drive myself to work, to my parents', to the Forest to walk Django, to the train station, to the dog food store, to my friend's house 5 miles away. When I actually drove on the road yesterday, it was as if I had never stopped, it was all natural.  Well I suppose 27 years worth of experience means that it's fairly ingrained but still I was surprised that I didn't 'notice' it more.

My parents' reaction to me telling them was complete surprise and a warning Not to Do Too Much and a stern look. *sigh*.   Oh and apparently my mother is 'worried about the way I limp'.  What???  I limp (a bit) because I am not yet fully weight bearing, oh and because my leg hurts!  And when I'm tired or my leg is tired, then I limp more noticeably.  I can see that I am going to have to have a little chat on Sunday when I see them.

OK this zen thing seems to have slipped off the rails a bit...

2.  It's Friday so that means tomorrow is the weekend, hurrah!   I will spend most of tomorrow studying and preparing for my research experiment/report which makes up TMA (assignment) 03.  This week I will be running the experiment with 4 participants who will be friends or work colleagues.  But that is the easy bit, writing up the intro, design/method and results will be the time consuming bit but I can get all but the results done beforehand.   At the moment I am awaiting the result of TMA02 which I submitted ages ago, but the deadline was only the 12th Jan so I might get the results in the next 7 days or so. I've kind of forgotten about that one now.

3.  My hair is Red Passion again :-)  My best friend G and I had a hair dying session at her house last night - hers strawberry blonde and mine red.   The last time I coloured it I used a mid-brown to see what it would look like, but it didn't have much effect on the hair that was red from previously, and the roots looked liked roots.  So this time I went back to Schwartzkopf shade no.43 which is much more 'me'! 

4.  In three weeks time I will be in Scotland for a long weekend :-)  though I'm not currently sure which property we'll be living in!

5.  Spring is coming!   Bulbs are starting to show their heads in the garden and new shoots are appearing on shrubs and trees.  The blue tits have been sussing out the bird box.  And the days are getting longer, albeit almost imperceptibly.

Hmmm, well still not feeling completely zen.  I'm really in one of those moods where I just want to lock myself in and not talk to anyone. I will try harder....

Propping up the eyelids

I almost fell asleep across my parents kitchen table this morning... at least, it felt as if I just closed my eyes I'd be gone.   We went over for two reasons - firstly my sister was down with her two youngest children (11 & 13) and her man so we wanted to see them; secondly Dad had a tree that needed cutting down so Mr H was doing the honours while there were extra hands there to help, and to kill two birds with one stone, as it were.  

I don't know how people cope with having loads of family around at Christmas, it makes me feel quite claustrophobic. Trying to find enough chairs/plates, who wants tea/coffee/whatever, lots of people talking at once.. I know some people thrive on the hustle and bustle but I just want to escape to a quiet corner somewhere with a good book.

I haven't done much physically over the last few days, other than the odd short dog walk, but I realised that we have seen friends/family every day since Friday. Combined with a drive up to the Cotswolds and back, I can't believe how exhausting it's been.   Tomorrow I have a day off from talking to anyone other than my husband and my dog, hurrah!   

Oh, we talked about the dinghies last night... one of them is a single-hander which I sail on my own; the other is a 2-man old wooden Firefly which I sail with Mr H.  We agreed to keep them (not that I was going to be making any big decisions now anyway) and just carry on pottering about in it as we do now.  ie. not worrying that we don't go out every weekend or for hours at a time.   I must stop comparing myself to the other people in the sailing club, those who are passionate about it.  The sort that go racing on Boxing Day even when it's -6C and there is 3" of ice on the slipway.

While they are doing that, Mr H. and I willl be getting on our walking boots and woolly hats and heading for higher ground.

No hangovers here

We had a fairly quiet Christmas Day, as we normally do.  In the morning we opened some presents and dug the veggies out of the frozen ground for our evening meal, then Mr H took Django for a walk while I did a bit of tidying and a bit of chilling out.   My parents came over in the afternoon after they'd watched the Queen's Speech; we played some vingt-et-un (aka Pontoon) and Mr H. went bankrupt, even as banker!   I said it was a good thing he went into Forestry. 

Our evening meal was melon and gravadlax, followed by roast pork and home grown veg, and Christmas pudding. My parents went home about 8pm so we had some time alone to just relax and watch some comedy on iPlayer, and open some presents we'd kept over. 

Not what most people would consider a 'traditonal Christmas Day' - we didn't overeat or drink very much; we didn't have a big pile of presents, just a few.  We didn't go to church because we don't any more - and why go at Christmas when you don't go the rest of the year? 

Best present for 2010: a pair of Grivel Spiders from Mr H.  These are like mini-crampons which fit in the instep of your boots for walking on snow or ice.  Having them meant that the three of us could go out for a lovely walk on the Forest today, where normally I would fear to tread...

If God isn't out here as well as in church, then something's definitely wrong.

Tired and emotional

I ended up yesterday Tired and Emotional.   I was at work all day, a lot of which I seemed to spend running (metaphorically) back and forth between people and computers, sorting things out.  By 3pm I was visibly flagging.  It must have been visible because my friend offered to take me home; but I didn't want to sit at home feeling miserable, better to have people around me when I feel like that. 

There are some things that are worrying me about my parents at the moment (which I don't want to post about here) - with that and everything else going on in my head at the moment it all feels too much sometimes.  Why do families cause us so much strife and worry...?  because we love them so much I suppose. We might not always like things they do, but we can't escape the blood ties. 

I am the youngest of three children and the only one who still lives locally to our parents' home, so I tend to feel responsible for looking after them, which I find hard sometimes.  I shared some of my worries with my sister last night though, and felt much better afterwards.

Going back to yesterday...  it was a good thing that my friend C was 'booked' to come home after work and help me put up my Christmas tree and decorate it, in exchange for a meal.  In fact, she bought Mr H. and I the Christmas tree as our present, which I thought was a brilliant idea. 

So I now have a twinkling sitting room, all I need now is Mr H. and DJ to share it with... only 13 days to go... not that I'm counting!

 

Six Word Saturday : a grand day out

Tired feet, tired hands, good day :-)

Today we met up with my niece who is at Uni in Glasgow, she caught the train down to Ayr and we did the tourist thing.

The end of the day my feet were sore, and my hands were aching (from the crutches), I reckoned that we had walked at least the Lang Scots Mile, twice!   We had burgers and chips in a seaside cafe which sold buckets and spades, and inflatable beach-balls and dinghies.  It was the first time we'd ever spent time with my niece on her own (ie. without one of her parents being there) and it was great to get to know her a bit better.  

Another lovely day :-)