Posts Tagged "Daily Life"
Sick Note
Morning folks,
My apologies but there will be no Writing Workshop this week. As some of you know I’m feeling a little under the weather at the moment, I’d probably even use the ‘exhausted’ word. Have had a couple of scary blacking-out moments and generally feeling very wobbly and tired. So I’m going to try and be good this week.
Not entirely sure what’s going on. I’m usually tired but not THIS tired. Kai is actually sleeping better generally but I’m finding the bad nights are intensely more gruelling now I’m used to the odd better night. I just want to sleep all the time, bullying my husband to get up early so I can have an extra hour or two. I’m finding the breastfeeding very draining these days too and am wondering whether it might be time to gently encourage Kai to wean now. In any case, I’m booking myself in to the doctors to get my iron levels checked and I’m going to try and spend a bit less time rushing round like a blue-arsed fly and a bit more time resting and not putting myself under so much pressure.
We’ve had four fab weeks of creative writing loveliness and you’ve been working very hard getting your entries in so I figure you could probably all do with a week off too. We’ll be back in business next Monday with five new prompts, I promise.
I shall still be about though, and will probably post the odd blog or two between now and then. But the priorities this week definitely need to be fresh air, snoozing, remembering to eat and cuddles with my boys. Oh and writing. Obviously. But of the quiet, as and when I feel like it, scribbling whilst sitting in a pile of leaves with Kai variety.
See you soon! x
Read MoreA Sad Goodbye
I had a blog post planned for this weekend. It was going to be lovely: in it I was going to tell you about the sense of peace and real happiness that came over me this last week; a real feeling of rightness that I haven’t felt before. Not contentment, that is something I am not so good at, but happiness: yes.
Firstly, I was going to tell you about submitting my first assignment for my creative writing course… on time! OK, I stayed up till midnight the day before but I work well under pressure and always have: nothing like a looming deadline to get those words flowing. Competing my first short story, from seed thought through the research and exploration process through to finished piece, was one of the most exhilarating experiences I’ve had in a long time. I was quite breathless by the end, the story building and twisting till finally those few last words came tumbling out. And the best thing? I love it. I love what I wrote. Those of you that read this blog know that doesn’t happen very often. I don’t even really care about the mark to be honest. I just want to write some more.
Then I was going to tell you about the Great Toy Guide, about how well it is doing, with mentions in two national papers in the last week and on the Asda website. About all the great features we are working on, about the sense of purpose it’s given me and how much I’m enjoying it, despite the fact that dealing with PRs sometimes makes my head feel like it might implode.
And then, finally, I was going to tell you about Kai. My beautiful boy who is now walking like a pro and at every given opportunity. And not only walking but squatting, twisting, bending down, falling over and getting back up again; working into a little shuffling run and swerving round corners in a way that makes smile every time. About our week of playing in the winter sunshine, and treats of hot chocolate and cream scones, shared just between the two of us and we grin and chat in a language no one else would understand. I might even have mentioned the fact that the night before last he finally, blissfully and inexplicably, decided to sleep from 7pm to 7am with only one brief wake up at midnight.
I was going to tell you about all those things. In excited, enthusiastic tones.
But then, on Friday, as most of you know due to the overwhelming number of lovely, sympathetic messages I received on Twitter, I finally had to say goodbye to my precious old cat Beth. So this is not the happy post I had planned.
I am really trying not to be too sad. Beth was 18 years old; she had had a long and comfortable life, much loved and much cherished. She didn’t suffer, having just one morning of very quickly going down hill as her kidney’s failed, but then being put to sleep as I held and stroked her, falling away so quietly and peacefully with no pain and no distress.
But she has been my little shadow for 18 years. She has watched me turn from 10 year old girl, to stroppy, rebellious teenage; she was there as Ant and I first began our relationship, moving with us as we moved into our first house, watching me through years of illness and recovery, through pregnancy and the introduction of a brand new little person into our household.
I shall miss her. Tremendously.
So I leave you with memories of Beth.
Of me, in my wisdom, falling in love with the runt of the litter of kittens we went to view for my 10th birthday and insisting she was the one for me. Her as a teeny tiny scrap of kitten who had to be drop fed milk; surviving cat flu, swallowing a whole needle and thread and having it removed from her stomach, and mysteriously disappearing for nearly a fortnight before arriving back home, timidly peeping from behind the back door: I can still see her little scared face as we tempted her back.
So vividly I remember watching her bravely stalk a mouse across our front garden, only for the mouse to turn, raise up on it’s hind legs and chatter at her ferociously as she almost fell over herself in her rush to get away. I kid you not.
My girl, who was never once vicious or nasty, submitting to cuddles like a newborn baby with a deep purr like a cement mixer. Who went slowly do-lally in her old age, forgetting where she was and when she had last eaten and turning into the epitome of a cranky old lady who just wanted to sleep and have her meals served on time.
And watching her with Kai. Kai, who loved to sit and stroke her with the most gentle, loving touch you could imagine, and twist her ears like a transistor radio in a way that was a little less gentle yet still met with only purrs and indulgent, half-closed eyes. Kai, who chose this week of all weeks to learn how to say her name and now points to every cat with excited cryies of ‘BU BU’ or ‘ETH’.
Yesterday we laid her to rest in my mum’s beautiful garden, under an Azalea bush named ‘blue tit’. My scrawny girl, who couldn’t have caught anything if her life depended on it, has finally got her bird.
Night, night sweet girl. We will never forget you.
xxx
Writing Workshop: Back Room Ramblings
Welcome back to the Wednesday Writing Workshop link-up! At the bottom of this post you’ll find the widget to post the link to your workshop posts. But first? Well I guess it’s my turn! I’ve chose prompt #5 (since that was kind of my homework this week anyway… two birds, one stone and all that…)
The following is a description of my back room. Tiny, cluttered, scene of many a thrown sippy cup and forgotten and later trodden-upon rogue Cheerio. It’s funny isn’t it, but when you spend a lot of time somewhere, after a while you just stop looking. Well tonight, I made myself sit, and I looked. I’m not in a very eloquent or witty mood so forgive the ramble…
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I wouldn’t call my back room a dining room. It seems too, well, pretentious, for a room that measures 10ft square and contains more clutter than dining space. The dining table is pushed to one wall with only two chairs free for sitting on, one sporting an attractive graffiti biro scribble on the seat from a certain young Banksy. In fact, for a number of months when Kai was first born we didn’t use the table at all, other than for piling things on that we couldn’t find homes for elsewhere – even now it’s sporting a Nodding Homer Simpson dashboard figure, my pencil case and text books and a pile of Ant’s folded boxer shorts. In our ramshackle two bedroom we have significantly more stuff than space so life becomes one long jigsaw puzzle game of moving stuff from one place to the next into some kind of semblance of order, that actually, no matter how hard we try and when you do get all the pieces vaguely fitting? Still just ends up looking like a small house filled with crap.
Our back room is the room that houses all the things we don’t know where else to put. So we have a dresser filled with stationary and printer cables and washing powder on one wall, Kai’s tricycle parked in front, next to the chalk board easel and the sand pit table and the big bag of plastic multi-coloured balls. (Actually thinking about it, the ‘stuff to space’ ratio has become increasingly weighted towards ‘stuff’ in the last 15 months… fancy that). There is the skateboard Ant was bought as joke for his 30th but that Kai likes to push his toys around on; there is the pushchair folded up under the radiator, next to Kai’s (disinfected) potty currently housing one lone shoe. There is the ironing board and the shredder and the travel cot in it’s bag and svivel chair that we don’t know what to do with but keep in the vague sensibility that it’ll be an extra chair for when next throw a dinner party (we never throw dinner parties).
On the wall above the dining table is our house’s biggest mystery. A square mirror set into the wall, like a window. Why it is there we have never figured out. On my wilder days I like to imagine it holds a whole other world. One with a more capable, together Josie who has a habit of scowling at me. Whatever it’s supposed to be however, Kai loves it – eating his dinner grinning at the plump, sauce covered baby that seems to like sharing his lunch times. The other walls look a little tired, the wallpaper peeling slightly at the seams, and in need of a fresh coat of paint. The line of dust along the skirting boards betrays my cursory and infrequent cleaning habits. The cobwebs in the corners quite embarrassing now I come to notice them…
But the thing that there are most of in my back room? Books. Books upon books, piled on top of books. Books filling three bookshelves and squeezed into the spaces on top and around, or just piled high at the side. It’s mostly non-fiction apart from a small corner, the beautiful floor-to-ceiling shelves in the front room reserved for the fiction section of my library.
You could write a biography of my life by these books. Each marking a time in my life, a specific interest or the latest obsession, most (ashamedly) past-by in favour of the next one before the spines are even creased, apart from the odd one where the well-thumbed pages portray a more lingering interest or significance in my life.
There are the books on alternative medicine, and healing and natural pain relieving techniques, from my days as a sick person. Books on meditation and mindfulness and mysticism from my days of soul searching. Books on mythology and Ancient Britain and esoteric mysteries from my days as a spiritual explorer. And books about creativity and writing and self-expression from my days as writer, artist and free spirit.
I am still all of these things of course, although to a greater and lesser degree than perhaps I once was. The books on healing are looking a little dusty and neglected while the books on creativity are rarely in their place on the shelves, instead lying in hopeful, easily grabbed piles round my living spaces.
I wouldn’t part with a single one. Pieces of me as they are. Pieces of my life, my own story.
Maybe I’ll add to their number one day with one authored by my hand, about a world I have created or a story I have told.
Who knows.
One thing I do know? Sitting here in my little backroom looking hard at every detail it is evident that book writing and wild imaginings should really take a back seat to the far more pressing need for some Mr Sheen and a bit of elbow grease… oh and perhaps a visit from Kim and Aggie.
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So now it’s your turn! What prompt did you choose?
1. You get a day off. Where would you go? What would you do? - Inspired by Metropolitan Mum’s Mummy Needs a Break
2. Write your house rules… your DREAM house rules, that is – Inspired by Potty Mummy’s own House Rules this week.
3. Take a well-loved bedtime story then re-write yourself and/or an episode of your day into the story – Inspired by April’s Tribute to “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”
4. Tell us about a close-call, a miracle, or a lucky escape - Inspired by the terrifying story of the baby falling under the train this week.
5. Sit in a room of your house you spend a lot of time in. And really LOOK. Notice all the details you usually miss, and describe them with all the creativity you can muster. Let the every-day inspire you – Inspired by ME!
Leave your name and the URL to your post in the MckLinky below (the URL should be to your post not just to your blog) and leave me a comment to let me know you’ve taken part. If you have the time it would be great if you could try and read and comment on at least two other entries. And be kind! It’s supposed to be a bit of fun – we’re not looking for the next Booker Prize winner here!
If you haven’t had chance to respond yet, then you’ve still got today! Or just wait till next week, when there’ll be five brand new prompts to get you thinking.
This Writing Workshop is brought to you in association with Mama Kat’s Losin’ It – who’s lovely author came up with the concept and runs her own workshop over in the U.S.
Dreamy Meme
Time, I think, for my second meme of the week as promised (with an appropriate gap to allow for meme overload black hole blog implosions).
Sandy Calico tagged me in a beautiful Dream Meme, started by Zooarcheaologist (who’s blog I have only JUST discovered – how slow am I?!). It’s simple… share a dream. And since I had some free writing to do for my OU course tonight I thought I would just combine the two.
So here goes. My dream…
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I open my eyes. It is half light, the early morning sunshine shifting through the linen curtains, making patterns on the multi-coloured quilt. Ant is fast asleep, as is the small, peaceful form of my baby daughter in her crib by our bed. The quiet sounds of their breathing overlap, creating one soft sound.
I shift my head to look at the clock. 6.00am. Time for up.
I swing my legs round from under the quilt and my feet sink into the the thick, soft pile of the carpet, padding quietly over to retrieve my dressing gown from the door and tiptoe out of the room. Down the long corridor, passing open doorways with rooms of peaceful space, gentle light and fresh flowers. I pause at the half open door that sports the enthusiastically scribbled Keep Out! sign with skull and cross bone warning, tentatively poking my head around. It is Kai’s room. A tousled blond mop peeps out from under a mass of tangled duvet, one smooth foot hanging lopsided over the edge of the mattress.
All is still. I smile and continue on my way.
Down the curving stair case, hand on the old wooden banister, half-skipping as I always have down stairs, ever since I was girl, resisting the urge to slide my way down. Within ten minutes I am seated at my desk, a mug of steaming hot tea in front of me, my laptop open and I am writing. The fire crackles softly, taking the chill off the fresh spring morning that I have let in through the large open window. The sound of the sea washing over the large cluttered room, the shelves of books and papers and toys nestled comfortingly next to each other to keep warm. Words flow from my finger tips, creating worlds upon worlds, stories of magic and wonder and dark mysteries.
I pause, now and then to look up and out at the view through the window in front of me. Watching the colours of the sea turn from grey to blue to green and swirling back to grey again in the gradually emerging light, white flecked as it breaks on the sandy beach I can spy over the low fence at the bottom of my garden. Chickens cluck companionably, scratching at the dry earth. Our tortoiseshell cat watching lazily from his vantage point of the windowsill, his tail flicking. Before the story and the magnetic pull of the words on the screen draw me and back and in and under…
Massaging my forehead with my fingertips, I stop and look up, pleased with my morning’s work, an hour having passed me by without me even noticing. My eyes come to rest on the letter on my desk, half hidden under a pile of tattered and bulging notebooks. It is the publisher’s letter of acceptance for my latest novel, the zero’s of my advance fee making me blink again in disbelief, making me read it all over again from the start. As I read the glowing words I half expect it to morph into the once familiar “Thank you for your submission Mrs George, but…” that would once make me retreat to the darkness of my duvet for days at a time. But it does not.
Underneath crowd other letters. Offers from magazines for features and guest writing opportunities, notifications of nominations for awards and book signing schedules. My fingers pinch the skin on my arm tentatively. It is real. I am awake. This is my life now.
Suddenly I hear a run of eager footsteps on the steps and the door opens in a rush and blur of motion and arms and legs as Kai throws himself into my lap to kiss me good morning before quickly pulling away and scooping up the huge quilt I made last winter from the soft, leather sofa and making a nest for himself on the floor in front of the fire to play. Filling my quietness with chatter and dramatic sound effects as dinosaurs battle pirates in a complicated attack on the hearth rug. I shut the laptop to sit and watch him play, sipping at my second cup of tea and remembering the time when my strong, tireless, curious boy was still a fidgety, uncompromising babe in arms and all the many adventures that have led us to this point. Difficulties and struggles forgotten in the simple, pure love and fierce pride I feel for this complex child of mine, of my bone and blood and temperament.
Before long I can hear the sound of movement upstairs and the giggles and play of Kai’s sister and their father as they wake up for the day. I contemplate the day ahead – a long, lazy Saturday filled with time together and leisurely breakfasts and long walks along the sand. I have never felt more alive, more connected, more complete as I do right now in this moment. Kai looks up at me with a grin and I smile.
Could life be any more perfect, I wonder?
No. I don’t think it could.
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So that’s my dream. What’s yours…?
Rachel at Life Slightly Used
Sylvie at There’s a NIP in the air
Ellen at World of a Mummy
Laura at Are We Nearly There Yet Mummy?
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