Spring

It's the first day of Spring today and I can read yesterday's post with mild horror.  No matter how turbulent the emotions are nothing humbles more than sitting beside your dying parent.

And The World Tips Once Again

So it looks highly likely that at some point today I'll lose my mother.

And the worse thing is not that our difficult relationship is making it hard to mourn or that my illness is making it hard to cope.  Instead a huge selfish bug has kicked in and all I can think of is that we're likely to lose our home.

Once again I fail as a mother.  My boys are doing so well at the school yet I know that the mortgage company will laugh at the very thought of letting me pay off the remainder, which in the grand scheme of things isn't much (about £15k).  Ex made sure my credit rating was ruined and there is not one thing I can do about it - and I've tried.

Does that seem callous?  To be thinking of this as my mother lies dying?  Possibly, as there will always be a solution.  Part of me just wants to crumple to the ground, part of me wants to run into the street screaming at the top of my lungs.  We are a small family and since my dad died it seems to have been a run of bad luck.  I just want to catch a break, I want to be able to relax and mourn properly without life constantly kicking me further down.
Please.

Just Because Sometimes...

You didn't see me I was falling apart
I was a white girl in a crowd of white girls in the park
You didn't see me I was falling apart
I was a television version of a person with a broken heart

It's Like This

If your imagination is stifled, not encouraged in any way, then it becomes stagnant and more difficult to access.  As a parent it's a responsibility to let your children become who they are not who you expect them to be.

Let them run; roll down the hill; get their new shoes muddy; paint and draw and forget the mess until it's time for you all to clear up (yes, them too, it's important); bake cakes and not worry if they're inedible or all over the place; write silly stories; sing silly songs; make up words.

That's the jist of it all.

On another note, it's also worthy letting them fail, finding out that the world, that people, are sometimes mean and nasty.  Grow from it, confident that they know how to deal with the situation, that they haven't been hidden away and protected to the point that they can't cope with reality.

That last one I'm seeing a lot of.

Keep On Swimming

It is dark days like this that make me think of restarting the other blog, the one where I parked my negative thoughts during the aftermath of my marriage break-up.  Because once the black cloud has me it is very hard, very hard to force a positive outlook and on nights like this, if it wasn't for the fact I have my sons, I would no longer be here.

That is a scary truth to acknowledge but I fear that for my own sake I must do so.  I'm always "fine", I'm always trying to smile through it but as times it gets so difficult.  I hate to be melancholy and to pick over the bones of what is wrong in an orgy of self pity but I just can't help it at times and if I hold on in there it will pass.

It's like the kiddie film when they say keep on swimming but I sometimes wonder how long I have to swim through the filthy, mucky stuff and when I will reach clear, blue water.

Being Selfish

For this is the year where I feel it is necessary to become a little more selfish without losing that which makes me.

Anyhoose - the West coast of Scotland (as well as the coast from Cornwall right up) has received a battering from the new year to say the least.  To illustrate perfectly -

This is how the pier at Millport normally looks...

And this is how it looked today

And I should really be thinking of all those poor people stuck on the island, stomach churning as the waves get higher, wilder and closer to the front door.  Instead all I can think is - please let dad's bench survive!

Selfish yes but it means so much to have done something for him that he would have been so happy with that I want nothing to ruin it.  And that is that.

(Photos taken from the t'internet)

Reboot

So at midnight tonight we get to put the clocks forward a year.  Tomorrow won't really be any different from today but it will *feel* different and that's the point.
Who says they don't believe in psychology obviously doesn't make any resolutions - to be broken within the first week - it's tradition!  Even those who promise not to play resolution roulette (which one will it land on? Congratulations, you got "Lose Weight" *audible groan*)  I know I do.

Twelve Years Ago Today

At just after 2 p.m. my life changed forever.  While the memories might be blighted with the realisation that who I had married would always let me down and the annoyance that I still made excuses for him "because of his upbringing" (which was a big old lie like everything else) there is this shining light.

Because no matter what, I will forever have this and that is worth diamonds and gold:

Happy birthday boys

T'was The Night Before Christmas....

And noms through the house...

With All The Best Intentions

I have been looking in to the world of art journals and the superbly organised and dedicated people who can and do fulfil their little books with alarming regularity.

As this blog testifies it is an evasive talent and one I wish I could capture and so, once again, and now in my 42nd year I tentatively look to achieving similar in both my art and my writing.  One each day, it doesn't seem too far fetched (she says now.)  I do promise myself this every year, especially around now as Christmas is knocking on the door and the year in about to reset to January again.

I need to work on both to improve, the art soothes my soul and I can even, on occasion, quieten the angry spirit that rises on recalling just how I was so easily discouraged and turned away from something that means so much.  Same goes for the writing.

It is a mistake that as a parent I am determined not to make.  Hell, maybe I might end up good at something for once.  I can do this and I want to do more:

It's Been A Heck Of A Year

My favourite month, the month of my birth, my sons' birth, Christmas and all the Yuletide festivities and each year gets a little further away from that magical place.  Yet there is still something about December and the dark days (that suit my mood of late). 

I'd much prefer for a cold, frosty month than the wind and icy rain of today.  The skies are so clear, cerulean blue sharpness.  

I feel sad the boys do not experience a large family Christmas but then again the ones I went to were never that good anyway.  I suppose if invited, they would experience whatever happens at their father's new family home with her family but they don't want to.  Youngest is very particular with what happens and I love that about him.  Eldest pretends he isn't that bothered but truly is.

We have a small family and it has been another year in the washing machine, but when we come out the other side we will still, no matter how much more we have to take, we will still be rich in love.

Little Bites

Hearing of someone who got so tired they spent over a minute trying to get into the wrong hotel room.

Picturing the poor sod in said wrong hotel room, covers pulled up to chin and staring into the darkness, as that minute stretched out into a *really* long time.

Sometimes it is the daftest things that make me laugh.

Inspiration From What Is Around You

While spending a very short week in the sunny splendour of Lanzarote we visited the house of the late Cesar Manrique, an artist born in Lanzarote who returned to his homeland in order to save it from the high rise horrors plaguing other tourist spots in Spain.  For that they should be eternally grateful and eternally proud.

I looked out over the football field behind my house today to see all the trees have been mown down to make way for yet another identikit road of houses.  Oh for the power of Manrique to have kept that little wood safe from the greed of developers.  I guess the heron, fox and other wildlife can get lost as long as they make a profit with their "exclusive" houses.

Anyway, stop wittering on.  Cesar Manrique built his house within the volcanic bubbles, while also ensuring the volcanoes remained protected.  He also took inspiration from the landscape and although modern art isn't really my thing I can see and appreciate works like this for the power and beauty they show:

And how many art galleries allow you to happily take photographs, to truly enjoy the art and take home the memories?

Wonder and the impulse which leads us to observation are the secret of analysis. ~ Cesar Manrique

Wish You Were Here

Never mind that.  Wish I was there, wish I'd never left.

Strange experience, either it is the amount of crap I've been dealing with of late or just the overwhelming situation I find myself in but unusually I did not want to return home after our yearly trek to absorb enough sunshine to last the winter.  I love greenery, I love the crisp winter mornings such as this morning brought yet I had a huge desire not to come back.

By the end of holiday I am normally ready for my own bed.  I cannot explain it further but one month from our departure and I'm still feeling the same.  Life trudges on and I'm left in limbo.  This isn't the holiday blues, this is a wish to escape completely.

Colours that have my watercolour palette itching to open.

Step outside the hotel and boom, there's a volcano (dormant)

History

We have some...

I should explain, Queen Margaret's Bower, the highest part of Linlithgow Palace, is where she waited for news of her husband, King James, who was off fighting the Battle of Flodden.  It was not to end well.  For some reason I like the small room, though how anyone with all those skirts and underskirts managed those stairs...

Photo taken 500 years to the day (near enough) of the battle, 9th September 1513.  If that doesn't send a shiver down the spine, sitting exactly where Queen Margaret waited, watching over the palace rooftops towards the far off fields.

Well Then

My real life first name is not Two, although it would possibly be better than Paula, which isn't actually my birth name but a shortened version.  I absolutely despised my birth name, lots of negative thoughts around it so Paula was the best of a bad world and closest I could get without a complete name change.

On an internet adventure (click on a link within a link within an article on a page I'm reading) I found this Finnish page which tickled me no end.

From now on when I hear my first name I will no longer cringe but imagine myself in this get up - coffee not included.

"Photo by Noora Ylikoski of the Paula-tyttö; the girl

named Paula that have been a part of Paulig's ads since 1904."

What, you speak Finnish and want the original page?

Okay then.  Clickety link.

Whaur ye bin?*

Summer has gone, the treadmill still runs as fast and this time we have the amazingly full schedule of two high school boys to deal with.  Thankfully, two weeks in, they love it, much more challenging than primary school but that isn't hard; it doesn't feel as though they learn much of anything in that final year.

Primary 7 is an exercise in caging wild animals and now they've been released, all minds working at one hundred miles an hour and hormones crashing in to each other.

It's the last day of August and already the wind brings a nip of Autumn with it.  Already summer seems so distant (yet we still have our holiday in October to enjoy - yay!)

This summer we did this:

And a bit of this:

Some of this;

And of course, this:

But mostly the boys did this:

Which they absolutely loved and will hopefully be doing again next year.

Most memorable of all, we visited my dad's memorial bench at Fintry Bay, Millport.  Whiling away a beautiful afternoon, enjoying the perfect view and thinking of how much he would have enjoyed it.

Add to that, this is the summer I finally received CBT for my CFS and that is AOK.


*Don't think I really need to translate from the Scots but just in case it's very simple - Where (have) you been?

This Meeting Will Come To Order

The Blondes AGM is now in session, Chaircat Padme has the floor...

Summer Is Here

Today is summer so enjoy it.  My boys were scheduled to be palace guides today at Linlithgow however one is ill.

Hayfever I curse you.  Was going to have a lovely morning to myself - and that's purely selfish but not being occasionally selfish is part of the reason I'm ill.