This Too Shall Pass ... maybe

I may not be around for a while.

I know, sure and certain death for a blog right?

Well, what can I say? Maybe it's better to have a swift death than a lingering, clawing, drawn out demise.

I have tried honestly.  I said just the other day that I should either get it back on track or give it up...

Like I was told - 'back on track - anyone can give it up'.

I guess I am just anyone then...

I'm not so different.  I'm not special.  I am NOT fucking invincible!

I've tried (and I've failed) to recapture the 'zing' - it just ain't happening for me right now.

I wrote a post that should have been upbeat and fun and yeah, I guess there are a few funny bits in it but it doesn't flow, its forced, I'm trying to be something that used to come naturally to me and if I can see it then so will you.

I could give you a hundred and one reasons why.

I'll give you one.

At the moment there is a kitten wedged behind my kitchen cupboard and I cant persuade it to come out.  I haven't got a fucking clue what to do about it.  It's been there since I brought it home from the farm supposedly to domesticate it before re homing it.  Well, that was more than 12 hours ago and the poor bugger is still there.

Ive tried leaving it alone.  Ive tried tempting it out with food.  I slept for about an hour and a half last night and the sleep I did get was filled with the most horrendous nightmares that made me glad to be awake.

I'm exhausted, I'm tearful, I'm sick to fucking death of pretending to be something I'm not.

I'm probably going to have to destroy my kitchen to get that kitten out but you know what?  If it comes out in one piece and it's ok then that's fine, I don't care. It will be worth it. Sometimes you have to do whatever you can, whatever it takes to save something precious.  There are somethings you just don't give up on and this is one of them.

I just want it to be ok!

I don't even care that I'm over reacting.  That I'm putting it out there for anyone to read.  Right now, I just don't fucking care!

I'm signing out for now.  I won't say forever, nothing is forever.

Part of me wants to apologise for being so self indulgent.  Part of me feels I should count my blessings.  Part of me knows I'm being fucking selfish and probably childish.

The bigger part of me doesn't care right now.

Maybe sometime I'll remember that I'm not just anyone ... not now, but sometime ... maybe ...

It's Like Baking A (Motherfucking) Cake

Ok, first off I have to give credit to Kristine at Wait in the Van for the title of this post.  For some reason it just made me laugh (although not as much as the actual post she wrote) and so I've stolen it ....  No excuses, just blatant theft and there possibly won't be any mention of cake either but never mind.

What I really wanted to talk about was breasts.

Well, blackberries and breasts.

Or, more specifically, blackberries, Jeeps and breasts (Oh yes, and those vest tops with the built in support which means you don't need to wear a bra unless you are particularly well endowed, which I'm not so I wear them without one).

And dogs, cows and random randy bulls ....

Anyhow, individually, in their rightful place, all of these things are great (well, with the exception of randy bulls).

As a combination ....  Hmm, well lets just say, they don't work so well!

Let me enlighten you.

The blackberries down by the canal have been pretty crappy this year.  The equation of rain and sun has left them small and bitty and they tend to fall apart when you pick them.

When I refused SD a taste of my solitary blackberry and apple crumble (hey, I LIKE him ok, I just don't like him that much!) he offered to take me for a recce around the fields next to the farm to see if we could find some better ones.

Last Thursday was a shorts and vest top day and we headed off, in the Jeep, with Gus running loose behind us ... and around us ...  and FUCK, in front of us!!

Bloody dog nearly gave me a heart attack and SD started to get really pissed off at me shouting:

STOP!  SLOW DOWN!!  MIND THE BLOODY DOG!!!

Apparently I was sucking all the fun out of the 60 degree climb out of the disused riverbed.

Well excuse me but the prospect of your Jeep wearing my dog like a black and white furry muffler isn't really doing much for me either!

Once Gus was safely ensconced in the back of the Jeep happily bouncing up and down as we shot down banks and along a rutted path I realised that the so called 'support' in my tee shirt a) wasn't really man enough for the job and b) that SD wasn't entirely unaware of this fact.  In fact, I'd go so far as to say he might have been taking an unnecessary amount of pleasure in seeking out the bumpiest path he could find!

Whilst it might have been amusing for him, I was in bloody agony!

I sat there, arms tightly folded, glaring at him while he shrugged helplessly muttering something about 'hard springs' and laughing at me.  BASTARD!

In the end Id had enough and hopped out telling SD I'd walk back and heading across the field to a gate that looked like a short cut.

As I approached the gate a herd of cows came rambling over obviously thinking I was there to feed them.  Now I like cows, I was brought up in the country and I'm not afraid of them.  Mostly if you leave them alone they will do the same for you.

I could hear SD shouting something but the cows were making a bit of a noise so I couldn't quite catch what he was saying.  As I swung my leg over the gate I heard him shout something that sounded like 'balls'. 

Balls?  BALLS? How about I repeatedly kick you in the balls and then you might have some effing idea of the pain I'm in??? 

Hmmm ... no, didn't THINK so!

As I dropped to the other side of the gate SD screeched to a halt in front of it.

'Didn't you hear me shouting you bloody idiot? - there's a BULL in that field!'

Ahh, ok, sure enough, there at the back of the crowd was the biggest, ugliest, meanest looking bull (with frankly the hugest appendage Ive EVER seen) eyeing me up with a hungry gleam in his mean little eyes.

Was I grateful to SD for (possibly) saving my life.
Well, no, I've got to admit I wasn't really. 

In fact I was even more pissed off at having my hissy fit inturrupted like that so I still refused to get into the Jeep and stomped off again with  bloody SD following me really slowly in the Jeep across the field and sniggering damn him with Gus barking at me from the back seat.

Trying to reassert my superiority and regain a little dignity I went off to do some kitten wrangling when we got back.  The farm cat had kittens a while back and I'd offered to take them home to get them used to people before re homing them.  Two have already been and gone to good homes and now I had two more to catch.  SD isn't a fan of cats and they know it so this is MY area of expertise.

Want to see what I ended up with?

Hmm, well blogger doesn't seem to want to let me insert photos right now so I'll tell you:

A three inch scratch along the side of my little finger, a gouge out of the finger next to it, a chunk out of one knuckle and a really deep scratch on my middle finger that bled like buggery.  Oh, and no fecking kittens!

On the plus side, there were loads of blackberries and on Saturday I picked enough to make 8ltrs of blackberry and apple to put in the freezer plus four bags of blackberries on their own to make ice cream with and today I made an apple and blackberry crumble cake, yay, now the title of this post makes SOME sense (thanks again Kristine ;).

I have to say, I'm pretty sure there are some people out there who probably have absolutely NO  idea what goes into baking a (motherfucking)  cake!

Five Sentence Fiction - Zombie

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This weeks FSF prompt is zombie ....  Ummm, thanks Lille ;)

Not only have I never written horror, I've never watched much either and I wasn't entirely sure what a zombie really was.

So, in my quest to know everything I popped over to google.  Many cultures believe in the existence of zombies and they take several different forms.

'According to the tenets of Vodou, a dead person can be revived by a bokor, or sorcerer. Zombies remain under the control of the bokor since they have no will of their own. '

As I wanted to continue with last weeks story  I have used this as a 'loose' basis for this weeks piece:

Barely noticing the cool damp air touching her face, the weak warmth of the sun as it struggled to burn through the early morning mist, the sweet cloud of lavender that filled the air as she brushed past or the cobwebs glistening like jewels in the hedgerow she was empty, devoid of all emotion.

One foot in front of the other, her mind so far detached from reality it was as though she were moving out of sync with the rest of the world as it rushed past her in a blur of colour and noise.

For a brief moment last night she had made her own choices, controlled her own destiny, her soul set free so that finally, finally she could find herself again.

 Or so she had thought ...

For only the foolish could believe that the bokor would willingly relinquish that power.

Sleepless In Somerset

Last night was night four of very little sleep.  It's an improvement on Thursday and Friday when I got no sleep at all so I guess I should be grateful.

I'm tired.  I'm really, really, really fucking tired!

I almost wrote a blog post at four this morning.  I'm glad I didn't or I might have spent most of today trying to backtrack on it.

You know the worst thing about insomnia?

BOREDOM.

There is nothing more boring than being awake when your mind is so tired you cant make sense of anything.  You can't do anything much if other people are sleeping.  You don't want to wake those you share a house with.  No one much else is around to talk to.  The stuff in your head is so mixed up that you probably wouldn't make any sense at all anyway. You wouldn't be able to express the crap that's churning around in your mind because mostly it doesn't make sense to you either.

Insomnia is lonely.  It makes you feel totally isolated.  It makes mountains out of molehills.  It makes you focus on the negatives and it makes you feel powerless.

I really fucking HATE insomnia!

Now obviously I'm still in zombie mode.  I've actually achieved quite a lot today all on auto pilot.  I rarely, if ever give into the urge to sleep during the day, it's not the solution and only means that another sleepless night is a certainty rather than just a possibility.  I know my brain isn't firing on all cylinders today but that's ok, it doesn't really need to but I can keep my body going in the hope that exhaustion will finally win and tonight I'll sleep.

I haven't always suffered from insomnia.  In fact it's only in the last few years that Ive had night after night of no sleep.  It's not a constant in my life.  I can't always work out whats triggered it and I find that giving it too much thought only prolongs it.

I can be happy and have insomnia or, as is more usually the case, I can have things in my life that make me unhappy or cause me stress.  I guess the common denominator is that I have things on my mind.

Ive never been big on sleep (which was a bonus when I had one 13 month old and a new born baby).  I don't understand lie ins, I really don't.  I can understand the relief of not having to get up for an alarm just not the 'not getting up' part of it.  But that's me and I fully appreciate that others see lying in bed until lunchtime on a weekend as a well deserved luxury.

Insomnia isn't about having the odd sleepless night because something's on your mind.  That's normal.  It's crap and it gets people down but usually it fairly isolated and explainable (is that a word???).

Insomnia feeds on itself and yes, I know I said I try not to focus on it too much but that's during the day, at night there IS no escape.

It first started after the breakdown of my marriage.  Another of ex lax's legacies I guess (god bless him for being so giving ;).

During the day Id worry about the usual stuff that people worry about in those situations but at night my fears would become totally irrational.

My main fear was that the house would burn down.  Now, if you've read a few of my 'shitty house' posts then you might not see that as so irrational!

The truth is that I'm fairly sure my house is safe and there isn't any danger of it exploding or spontaneously combusting but, in the early hours of the morning that wasn't really any comfort to me as I lay in bed planning escape routes.  I also used to worry that something would happen to one of the children or to me so I couldn't look after them.  Again, not totally irrational fears given the circumstances but intensified to the point where I felt I had to make all sorts of contingency plans 'just in case'.

Over time these fears have lessened.  I can see that they were mostly a product of an exhausted, overwrought, over active imagination. These days I rarely get the nightmares that filled the few hours sleep I did get and left me in a pile of tangled, sweat soaked sheets .

Life has gone on and I've moved past much of that.  Occasionally it make a brief return and sometimes it's hard to distinguish between the nightmares and reality.  But life IS mostly good.  My health has improved dramatically.  My weight has been fairly stable this year with the odd dip but nothing too serious.  I've spent hours decorating, improving my house which (despite the fact that I still have things to do) gives me an enormous amount of pleasure.

But the insomnia still haunts me and I'm soooo fucking tired of it (very bad pun intended;).

I don't know what it would take to sort this ....

Hmmm, actually, you know what?  That might not be true because like so many people I'm too fond of saying 'I'm ok' when the reality is that I'm not.  Possibly the only place I will say it is here on my blog.  The thing is that I bury the things that make me not ok so deep these days that nobody really knows they are there.  Even I don't acknowledge them because, under lock and key they cant hurt me can they?  I can carry on my life, loving, living, laughing (and it's all real, it's not a pretence, there's plenty of loving, living and laughing going on I promise you).  That's what people do isn't it.  It's called survival because each and every one of us have things burried that can hurt us if we let them.

Except ...  they do hurt me don't they?  They are the reason I cant sleep.  They may be buried but they aren't dead and keeping me awake is their way of reminding me they exist.

No one lives a life without these things.  I'm not unique and I'm not alone.  I'm unlucky that it affects me in this particular way that's all.

I guess you may be thinking that the solution would be to confront these things.  If you do then you could be right but then again, you could be wrong.  I may have confronted some of them in the past and nothings changed.  There may be things that would actually be made worse if I did confront them (and not everything IS better out in the open).  There may be things that are just too fucking painful to dig up and actually insomnia is the lesser of two evils.

I don't necessarily advocate burying or ignoring things.  I don't actually think it's the answer for most people but it is a choice that most of us make.  Sometimes being honest about things or even being honest with ourselves is the hardest thing in the world and so we're not and, if there are answers out there, solutions, a way forward that could bring us happiness or at least peace then we will never hear them because we are too afraid to ask. and too busy pretending we are ok.

That's just really fucking sad isn't it?

You know how I feel right now?  No, it's not depressed.  I've been there and this is something different.

I feel melancholy.  

Now that's a great, very underused word that describes exactly how I feel right now.  I don't know what the dictionary definition is (and for once I'm not going to google it).  For me melancholy is an innate sense of sadness, of pensive thought, a yearning for ... well, for whatever.

I guess I've been dwelling a little on my last post.  There comes a point where it really is too late and what then?

Like I said, I'm tired.  This is most definitely one of those posts written at one of those times where if I had any sense I'd leave it in draft for at least 24 hours before deleting it.

Well insomnia ate my common sense so fuck it, I'm publishing and I'll be back to backtrack like crazy tomorrow ok ;)

I Remember

Eleven years ago today tragedy touched my family.

The day before had been a beautiful day spent in the garden with my sister and brother in law.  My sister was six months pregnant.  They were so happy and so looking forward to the birth of their first child.

That night Mario suffered a heart attack, he was 45, a year younger than I am now.

Words can hardly describe the horror and total disbelief that this could have happened.

Mario was one of the kindest, most gentle men I have ever had the privilege to know.

He wasn't just my brother in law, he was family and I loved him

I don't apologise for a re posting. As long as I still have my blog I shall re post this every year on the anniversary of his death as a tribute to a man for whom I had enormous respect, affection and love for.


I Remember Mario

I remember the look of pride and sheer joy in his eyes as he placed his hand on her swollen stomach. ‘My little Piranha’ he said.

They smiled at the private joke, sharing a moment of complete happiness amid the chaos and noise of a family get together.

The plate of food lay forgotten on the table as he crouched down to talk to the young boy playing with his Action Man

.

Seeing her brother being paid so much attention caused the little girl to forget her shyness of this big man with the big voice. She toddled towards him and gently touched his face, ‘kiss’ she said as she lent forward and placed her lips where her fingers had been.

He looked at me and smiled. ‘This is what it’s all about’ he said without words, ‘this is who I was meant to be’.

When the phone call came early the next morning it made no sense at all. Years have passed and it still makes no sense.

He never met his beautiful girl. She didn’t get to kiss his cheek.

But while she may not have her own memories, as long as I remember, she will have mine.

Be happy and remember, that while when you lose someone, you don't ever get back the opportunity to do what you wished you had done, every moment leading up to that IS an opportunity to fulfil that wish.

Say What???

Ok, so I just logged onto Facebook and thought I'd share this gem with you. 

Now I have a few people on my friends list (and it's not a big list through choice but I've been through all that before once or twice... ;).

What I do have is a few people left over from the early days, mostly relatives of Ex Lax.  They mostly seem harmless enough and to be honest, I'm not sure some of them even know him personally, it's a pretty big and convoluted family.

Anyway, like you do when you first join FB (or like I did anyway), I accepted any friends requests that came my way, mostly because it seemed rude not to.  I'm a lot less polite these days and I've trimmed down my friends list to people I either actively want to know about or people that don't particularly offend me.

This has left me with one or two of Ex Laxs relatives.  A couple I've grown to like (pretty sure none of them are related to him by blood ;), a couple who I keep for entertainment value (it's a little like having my own private series of Eastenders on tap) and one or two I forget are there they post so irregularly.

Every now and then one of them posts something that has me in stitches.  Who could EVER forget this classic from ...  Well, lets just call her C:

 " i can not belive the swear words a couple of little kids were comin out with up the playschool right in front of their mum and she dint say shit about it wtf just goes to show who they learnt it from, so glad my lilman is such a gd boy x"

I don't think C does irony but she certainly makes me laugh!

Today I'm confused.  I just logged on to find THIS update from K:

" 'K' is fucking fumming"

I am genuinely at a loss to know if she did in fact mean fuming (and if so, why?) or if this is some strange sexual practise I'm unfamiliar with. 

After my experience when I googled 'Hogtied' - yes, yes, I know NOW ok but for those of you who missed that post (and for those who are interested in stats, it's interestingly the post I get the most hits on ;), I had confused it briefly with 'hamstrung', a perfectly easy mistake to make ... isn't it ... yes, of course it is!

I don't want to google it in case my computer crashes and I have to take it in for repair.

Anyway, so far there has been no follow up so I'm still in the dark about this one. 

Anybody either know the answer or want to google it for me .....

A Shitty Ditty

Oh god, excuse the title but once it was in my head there was NO shifting it!

On the plus side, at least I'm blogging again ;).

I thought it was time to lighten the mood a little and what better way than with a little poetry:


The wheels fell off my Vax today
It's really the last fecking straw
I kicked it's blue arse out of the way
And for good measure slammed the door

My washing machine exploded you know
With a great big fecking BOOM!
You should have heard my wail of woe
As the stench of burning filled the room

My dishwasher made a chirruping sound
But nothing seemed really awry
Until something flew out (it was small and round)
And almost took out my eye!

My steamer's bust (although there's still steam)
It's just nothings ever cooked
It's like my appliances are on the same team
As they laugh at me - 'YOU'RE FOOKED'!

*and don't even get me STARTED on the affect I have on cars ;)