So it is more than clear now that I have completely failed at the whole blog every day for a month thing. I admit defeat. I have no excuse. I just didn’t blog some days. The whole just write, just blog seems not to be doable for me.
I learnt the hard way to give myself breathing space. I know when enough is enough and tend to shut down a little. Cut off the non essentials. Like writing a blog post every day. Challenges are all good and well, but the dreaded home/work balance is teetering perilously close to tipping point without the added extras.
The pointy end of the year is here and I am clawing my way to the end. The evening is my haven. Away from noise and the demands of each day. I want comfort television with a side of gin. Blogging is not high on my priority when I finally sit down. The words, sometimes, somedays they just do not come. I have made my peace with that.
I have work to complete, a house in disarray, children over tired after a long school year. The end is in sight. I just have to get there in some semblance of one piece. I can do it; well there is no alternative. In the meantime, there is music and joy, and more takeaway meals than is recommended. It is how the end of the year rolls. I can live with that.
So, I had a day specific post yesterday. I was all clever with the technology, knowing I would be out all day and into the night. I wrote, I linked, I edited and added an image. I scheduled and shut down the computer.
Super clever, busy blogger that I am. Except apparently I did not actually schedule the post. Top bloggy job.
Ah, blog-vember you have beaten me. Damn you.
I have been a bad post a day blogger.
I am pulling out all the tricks. An image, a song, and oh look, a witty closing line.
Tomorrow I will be better. Promise.
How are you at sticking to challenges? Good, bad, or down right hopeless like me?
Alternate title: Things your daughter didn’t think she’d be photographing today. Bless her.
Confession. I love harem pants. Slouch pants, low crotch (google at you own risk) pants, happy pants. Call them what you will, call me what you will, I love them.
My absolute favourite pair are over two years old now. They have a small hole in a side pocket, but I am prepared to obtain and use needle and thread to fix them. Such is my love for this cotton garment.
I read an interview with an up and coming Melbourne designer a few weekends ago, in which he spoke of his love for this baggy arsed attire. He argued he loved the gender neutrality of them. I could not agree more. (I have searched high and low for the interview and can not find it – nor remember his name, if anyone knows, I’d love to know.)
I know this makes me tragic, and I am aware I am all kinds of hammer time wrong. But I just don’t care. My love of these pants began in the late eighties. I was a teenager, I went to a uniform free school for years 11 and 12. It was all baggy pants and big hair. MC Hammer – he may have made them famous, but I wore them first.*
What clothing item are you overly attached to?
*This may or may not be an entirely accurate statement.
Today instead of blogging, I could just put a link to this post adding the words, what she said. It seems some days blogging worlds and words collide.
Instead, I am musing over my own thoughts. Determined to see this blogvember challenge through to the very end. I know this is my space. I can write, blog, comment however, whenever, whatever I want. Say, or not say the things that need saying. The choice is mine.
Today, as I head into week two of operation go slow I am beginning to see that I am not as good as doing nothing as I thought. Bathing in the middle of the day is all very nice, but I feel time is slipping away. The days are slipping away. It’s the age thing getting to me again.
In an attempt to be contemplative and reflective I filled the hot bath with sweetly scented salts. I am now prune like and smell of frangipani. My heels have been pumiced into submission and my face exfoliated to a sheen. I am shedding skin.
I wonder at the words I choose to write. The ones of which I press publish. I am thinking about what they do not say as much as what they do. Readers cannot read my mind I tell myself. But then I do not think I need to tell everything to tell a story or share my life. Some things are not for the telling.
I contemplate what movie to watch. Consider if I should go for a walk or just rest; and wonder if a glass of wine will tip me over the edge of good health. I press perfume to pulse points, look for the bright side and tell myself good health is more than resting up.
As for blogging and writing, perhaps this month has been better for me than I am ready to admit to. It’s all very well to say I can blog when I want, but perhaps sometimes I should blog when I don’t want to. Ah, the shedding of skin. It’s more than exfoliating and a pumice stone.
Oh it’s all fun and games until someone gets high blood pressure.
I had an image in my head of people with high blood pressure. They were red faced and angry, often with spittle dried in the corner of their down turned mouthes. They didn’t exercise, the were breathless and were old.
Cue me at the GP’s last week. I was there for my hurty knees, which had morphed into hurty knees, back, neck, hips and fingers. While I was there, sorting out anti-inflammaroty and pain medications, my doctor thought he’d just take my blood pressure, seeing as I’m of that age now. We had a bit of a joke about it. He is the same general age. We muttered about teenage children and he put the arm band on. I was far from worried, I’ve never had high blood pressure before. I chatted away while the machine did its work.
It was at this point the GP turned the machine around to let me see the numbers. Now, I don’t know about you, but I have no idea what reasonable blood pressure should look like. But apparently the numbers I was being shown were not good. The words very high were said.
Oh. No big deal, it could be because of the pain I was in. Nevertheless I was sent for a few blood tests, and told to return in a few days for a follow up. Turns out at the follow up my blood pressure was no longer in the very high. No, I’m an over achiever and now it was extremely high. Excellent. Or, you know not.
So, now I am spending some large parts of my days doing not much while this latest health issue gets sorted.
I have been compiling a list. This year there has been a foot injury that took months not weeks to heal. There was the whole breast lump and my need for brave boots. There have been a few arthritis flair ups and now, high blood pressure. It appears I am in fact getting older. Who knew that would actually happen? I mean really WHO KNEW?
I know I am lucky. I have (don’t laugh) relatively good health, I try to keep some semblance of fitness. I eat well. There are beans, legumes, whole grains and lean protein in my diet. There are fresh veggies, fruit and nuts. I enjoy a few glasses of the good stuff, but I figure it’s all about balance.
But, as life would have it, I am ageing. The fact I only feel like I’m about twenty-one (as long as I don’t see my reflection anywhere) appears not to matter. Life has other ideas. It likes to remind me people born when I was at university are now employed and have drivers licences, and they can drink alcohol legally. It likes to remind me I am grey of hair and my eyebrows get these weird extra long ones every now and then. (What is with that by the way?) And as for facial hair. Men and movember have nothing on me.
So, while I am in rest mode, and getting to the bottom of the blood pressure thing, I’ve been catching up with some favourite movies. There is nothing a good period costume drama can’t fix. Ever. Today movies on the couch, tomorrow Morning Melodies and the pokies.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a date with the couch, some tweezers, a magnifying mirror and Mr. Rochester.
Shit is getting real people. Shit is getting real.
The oh so very pointy end of the year is here. Meetings in overdrive, reports being written, ends are being tied, hopefully tightly. Nothing messier than unravelling ends.
As I type flashes of henna from my palm appear. It makes me smile. Music plays from the dock on the top of the fridge. The washing machine hums and spins.
Thoughts fly. Hearts pump. Lungs fill and deflate.
The pointy end is here, and I am not ready. I need time. I want to hold out my henna inked palm and tell the world to just stop. Please. Just for a while. I’m not ready.
I need to run. I need to ride. I need to slow down. Move more. Rest easy. Keep going. Eat less. Eat more. Sleep. Sit in the sun. Brew tea.
Laugh.
I am angry at the universe today. I am rebelling against it by cleaning the toilet in good clothes. I am playing music loud and throwing caution to the wind. Take that universe! Get bleach on me as I scrub the loo. I dare you.
Some days are better than others. It’s the way it goes.
Thoughts fly. Hearts pump. Lungs fill and deflate.
We get up, we get on. It is the way of things. Tomorrow, so the cliché goes, is another day.
In a day of highs and lows I have decided to dwell on the highs.
This week marks the celebration of the Hindi festival Diwali, The Festival of Lights.
This afternoon if you glanced through the windows of the kinder, you would have seen a mother joyfully dancing with her daughter, teaching the rest of the children and staff how to Bollywood dance. You would have seen two bent heads, as Indian mothers painted henna on hands. You would have seen feasting on home cooked food. Rice, vegetables and delicious sweets.
There were balloons, streamers and candles. There was laughter, dance and song. Red, glowing faces, from the exertion of dancing to Jai Ho.
There was a room filled with joy.
This is the stuff of life people. This is the stuff of life.
I have memories of my grandfather walking slowly in slippered feet. More still of him in a wheelchair, feet shuffling on carpet as the chair was pushed along.
He complained of something being caught in his throat when I visited with my sisters. Emotion stuck, causing an old man to cough.
He has been on my mind of late as I shuffle through the house in my uggs. Walk slowly through the supermarket. People passing on their hurried way. I envy them their quick pace. I notice the hustle of people now I cannot join in. It will return, my hustle. But for now, it is stuck, like emotion in the throat.
Tablets and toast for tea. Washed down with water and the bitter aftertaste of uncoated pills.
My shuffling feet. My slow witted knees. My thick, unyielding fingers. I talk, I write, I walk and I wait. My hustle will return. But while I learn of patience, I think of a grandfather and complain of something being caught in my throat.
I have the mid month slumps. The tireds. The can I just sleep now for, like, forever? I could bore you with work business, joints not cooperating, hay fever causing major eye and nose leakage. But I won’t.
Instead I’ll tell you how today I am 41. How this means I have known my husband for over half my life, and am now pretty much the age my mother in law was when I met him.
I’ll tell you how I will never tire of the excitement five year olds have for birthdays. Or how they love to sing it to you with gusto at the top of their lungs.
How each year my parents phone and sing happy birthday in exactly the same way. How I know they do this for my siblings, my children, my niece and will for my nephew too.
I’ll tell you how as I type I can hear the person I have been with for over twenty years icing a special spelt birthday cake with choc-peppermint grated in top.
And that is how I will leave it. Because some days it’s better to focus in the good.
I miss flexing my writing muscle. But time will pass, it will be flexed once again. But for now, I am content and tired. I am ready to blow out candles and climb into bed, waiting for sleep to find me.
If you’re a Melbourne reader don’t forget to check out the giveaway of four tickets to see the production Dickens Performs a Christmas Carol.
