365 Project, Week 15

The weather has been kind to us this week, making my walled garden look like something a lot more continental than it actually is.

What it mostly is is big piles of dirt and the holes they came out of. And an old oven. Which has meant lots of going round Mum’s to enjoy the sunshine.

Speaking of ovens the Boyfriend cooked me a delicious meal in it, breaking it in properly.

The weekend was spent mostly outside – Mum and Carole needed baby sitters as they both did work in their garden and house respectively. I took on babysitting duty and watched as carnage ensued.

Only little Artie remained oblivious to it all and stayed peacefully in his buggy (by choice, he hassled us to get in there!!) for most of the afternoon, enjoying a nice spot of shade with Charlie.

The Jungle Gym that the Step Dad was building was completed late on Saturday, and was a huge hit with Dyl in particular, who liked the steering wheel in the highest turret. He’s very adept at climbing up there, but hasn’t quite mastered getting back down.

Sunday saw the babysitting favour returned as the Step Dad fixed our curtain rail. I was on baby sitting duty again, as a bad case of tinnitus meant I was keeping well away from noisy power tools. At this particular moment they were both being adorable, but the chaos was soon back, until kept at bay once again with eggs on toast.

It was a lovely weekend, and the Boyfriend and I are one step closer to having the house we both want – even if it was the relatively small step of having a curtain rail fixed. There are still plenty of things to do, starting with this little issue that the Boyfriend highlighted by illustrating the issue on one of our walls. In red felt tip. (the wallpaper needs removing, another issue we will get to one day!)

Being an average sized person, I’d never noticed that the patio doors in our dining room are small. The Boyfriend has to duck every time, and wants to swap them and the problem causing window out for doors more like in the second picture. I’m not sure why wearing a lampshade on your head is representative of happiness.

365 Project, Weeks 13+14

It feels like such a long time since I last sat down to do this that I’m having to look at my photos to remind myself what I’ve been up to. It’s a little like trying to narrate a picture book when someone’s crossed the words out.

Week 13 started in a good and bad way. Good: it was May Day Bank Holiday, which meant a free day off for the Boyfriend and I, and we spent it doing a bit of cleaning followed by an evening with friends eating copious amounts of cheese.

The cleaning was necessary because, in a fit of oven induced rage, I pulled our oven out of the wall (not as aggressive as it sounds… it was in fact never attached to the wall) and behind was a sign of the filth that is inside the oven.

Yes, that’s the mess on the outside. Don’t try to imagine the mess on the inside. You wouldn’t even come close. Hence the ripping out of the wall.

The evening of cheese was spent in a friend’s garden, beneath a gazebo, with a chiminea to keep us warm.

The evening started well, but soon descended into hilarious chaos as the heavens opened, turning our Gazebo into a steam bath as the rain hit the chiminea and instantly boiled, and water dripped down our necks.

Fortunately, good company is all you really need to keep yourself warm, even if you aren’t particularly dry.

In preparation for the wedding on Saturday, I needed to cook a cake – and with the aforementioned oven issues, that meant going to Mum for some help. The Boyfriend distracted my little brother with some stories while we attempted to cook a cake.

The cooking soon descended into a slightly drunken takeaway dinner, as Mum consumed half a bottle of wine.

That left Mum to finish the cake for me, which she did, and we managed to transport it all the way to Bath almost in tact.

The wedding was beautiful, in a stunning location.

The occasion had the Bride’s personality stamped all over it, and it was a wonderful day, full of fun. And the Boyfriend was looking dapper in a new suit.

We arrived home to empty cupboards and, in a clear out, found these, a source of much amusement for Mum over FaceTime. She’s going to grow them in the garden, and I hope will make us something delicious with the potatoes she grows.

Spoiled for time with friends this week, we went to play snooker at the local snooker club. I played pool with Carole, because I suck at snooker. I suck at pool too, but it was fun anyway. I wish I’d been a little less tired, as I felt my already infinitesimal skills were hampered even further!

To go with our oven issues, we’ve had a bit of a DIY disaster. Our bedroom curtain pole fell off the wall due to some old, crumbly plaster. The Step-Dad made a valiant attempt at reattaching it, but it wasn’t to be. While we wait for the time and the parts to do the bigger job, we rigged a temporary curtain.

Because our new oven wasn’t arriving for a fortnight, we spent a lot of time eating takeaways and meals out. The old oven’s position in the middle of the floor didn’t make the hob easy to use, and we weren’t able to move the oven because it was hardwired. Dining out at Wetherspoons gave us another opportunity to spend time with friends, and for me to relax my overworked brain with some children’s puzzles!

Saturday was my birthday, and though the Boyfriend was at work, Not Quite were doing a fete and I was going to my third wedding, I had a really lovely day.

But to top the weekend, and the fortnight off, our oven arrived today. While we have no food to cook in it, to be perfectly honest, I am just glad the ugly hole in our kitchen is filled. I got a cookbook for my birthday, and I can’t wait to try out some new recipes.

Happy Second Mother’s Day

It’s that time of year again, where Twitter and the internet go crazy for Mother’s Day, and I sink into a temporary panic, because I forget (every year) that it’s American Mother’s Day tomorrow, not British Mother’s Day, which was already celebrated some months ago.

But as I’m sure any child who adores their mother would say – Mums are definitely worth celebrating twice. Because of this, and because my Mother’s Day gift to Mum was a hair cut she couldn’t redeem for weeks, making things the first time round a bit of a non event, today’s post is dedicated to my lovely Mum, and all the reasons I think she’s fabulous.

1. She tells it like it is

So, I phoned Mum the other day and somehow dropped into conversation that I could now jog round to hers (a distance of about…. yeah, probably less than half a mile. Okay, I did Google Map it, it is less than half a mile) in under four minutes.

‘A bit full of yourself, aren’t you?’ was her acerbic reply.

Mum has always been as liberal with her criticisms as with her praise, but while that can sometimes be a tad difficult for the artistic temperament to swallow (I went through an art phase aged 15ish. I sucked.) it was always constructive criticism that challenged me to be better in what I was doing. I would have been ashamed to do less well than I was capable of, and that drove me to great academic achievement (I got a C in Art – a bloody miracle!).

And because she’s so honest when things are bad, you know you can trust when she turns round and says, ‘You know what, that’s brilliant.’

2. She still loves me, even though I tried to run her over

Haha, that sounds so much worse than it actually was. I may have mentioned before about the lowest point in our lives – when we moved house after Mum’s first marriage officially broke down.

It wasn’t because of the ongoing relationship issues, or the fact that we were leaving the home we’d loved for nearly seven years, or that I was even upset about the divorce – it was just a culmination of the stress of everything we’d been through, symbolically brought to a head by the stress of moving house. I’d been working a shift at Morrisons all day and was tired and grouchy. She had been packing boxes all day and was tired and grouchy. We bumped heads. Hard. Which resulted in me trying to drive away while Mum tried to sit on my boot so I couldn’t. Which involved a lot of me revving my engine until Mum’s new partner came and took her away and told her to let me go and blow off some steam.

Now she likes to tell people I ran her over, and we can both laugh about it, and look back at that time when we were both under so much pressure and feel glad that we had each other to pull ourselves through. Because once the fireworks had been let off and the smoke cleared, the foundations of our relationship had not been damaged. And even though the next day I got locked in the bathroom and cried, and Mum laughed, I still look back on the whole messy experience and think: I never would have got through without her. I like to think she looks back and thinks the same about me.

3. I know I could always come home

There reached a point when I was eighteen when, despite an intense reluctance to leave the Boyfriend behind, I was desperate to go to Uni. I just couldn’t face living at home anymore. I wasn’t because I didn’t love my family, or appreciate them – I was just ready to leave the nest and start building my own. But even though Mum turned my bedroom into a spare room almost instantly (she knew I’d almost never come home) I knew if I needed to, I could always go back, and space would always be made for me. And I still could now.

4. She’s always ready to share advice and experience

I’ve been having a bit of a rough time lately. I’ve been suffering with Depression on and off for about a month because (TOO MUCH INFORMATION ALERT!) my new contraceptive implant is playing havoc with my already fragile hormones. I’ve had good days and bad days. And some days that are good and bad alternately throughout the day like some kind of manic-depressive see-saw.

I know I can always talk to Mum about stuff like that, and she’ll always have a helpful word or two to give. On a particularly bad day, I went round, moaned for about an hour at her, and left with an exercise plan, instructions to drink lots of water and a weight off my chest. She knows what to do, because a lot of the time, she’s been there, and she’s always ready to make sure I take the easiest route out of whatever trouble I get myself into.

5. She invests in me

And I’m not just talking money, although she did lend us some, with no hesitation, to help us get the house. She’s invested her time and expertise into helping us get the house where it’s at today. I’m looking at the walls of my study right now and thinking, ‘Mum painted those,’ with a smile.

We will pay back the money in time, and have, between us, invested much time in their house (the Boyfriend is always on standby to help in the garden with boy stuff, and I always try to help out somehow when I’m round for a significant length of time) but I know that Mum will always be ready with a paint brush, or curtains expertise, or whatever we might need next week, with no thought of what she’s going to get in return.

I could go on, but I’ll leave it at that. Happy Mother’s Day Mum, and to mothers everywhere, not just in America, who deserve a bit of extra love for everything they do for us. If you’re anything like my mum, you definitely deserve celebrating twice!

365 Project, Weeks 11+12

Things have been a bit of a blur the past couple of weeks, hence the consolidated post. I spent last weekend at a wedding and was so physically and emotionally drained by the end of it – having driven down, changed in a service station toilet, arrived at the wedding, checking into our hotel at about 11pm after dancing my heart out, only to drive back the next day – that I didn’t even have the energy to type and upload pictures. Expect a similar situation next week when I do it all over again!

The wedding was beautiful and full of creative ideas, like a fingerprint tree to record the guests, and speeches that made me bawl my eyes out (hence the emotional drainage).

The couple getting married were friends from my Uni days, and it was lovely to see them again. And to pull a few of our trademark Uni dance moves in fond memory.

Work last week and this has been intense for the Boyfriend and I. We both feel like we’ve been through the ringer, and the Boyfriend’s health is only slowly improving after his flu, with unrelated but badly timed wisdom teeth troubles. We’ve hit that point where we feel like we haven’t actually spoken to each other in weeks, and I confess, I’ve not dealt with it very well.

The solutions has been lots of cake.

This friday, I babysat for Carole while she went for a meal with her parents. I took T&A to meet my little siblings. Chaos ensued.

There was lots of dancing.

While A bonded with Mr T.

And Ad impressed with her spelling skills. Note, she writes backwards because she’s a lefty. The words read Ofu and Tury, which if you think about it, is pretty impressive phonetic spelling for a four year old.

I jogged to Mum’s today to find her trying to encourage her tadpoles to escape into the pond, in order to thin their population in the tank so they start actually turning into frogs. Her chose method was to put the tank in the pond and watch what happens.

But all the jogging I’ve been doing (haha, not much) has had a bit of an adverse effect on my poorly toe. The new nail is growing underneath the old one, pushing it off. Hot baths and exercise have forced it very loose. I got fed up of it snagging on everything today, and performed some surgery.

I’m less horrified by the amount of leverage I’m getting on that nail, more by how hairy my toe is. I am seriously going to have to get the tweezers on those!

Objects In The Rearview Mirror

My musical taste as a child was very much influenced by the CDs my mother chose to put in the (then revolutionary) six CD changer in her Ford Galaxy. We had little or no influence over what went in the changer, and I have no regrets about that now. I’m much disappointed that these days, the albums in there are the Spongebob Squarepants OST and Cbeebies Greatest Hits. Mum’s Best of ELO album gave me a lasting love of much more than Mr Blue Sky. Her Soft Metal Ain’t It Heavy album meant I knew Don’t Stop Believing before Glee made it newly famous.

But it was always the two Meatloaf albums – a near permanent fixture in the much coveted CD slots – that had the most lasting impression on me.

As a child of eight or nine, I was too young to understand what Meatloaf professed he wouldn’t do in I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That), but I couldn’t help but be moved by the raw emotion of both the music and Meatloaf’s incredible voice. The music was a double influence for me, because of Jim Steinman’s piano led style. As a budding pianist, I loved to hear my instrument played in music I found interesting, and so evocative.

I loved the slower songs, mostly, Heaven Can Wait, For Crying Out Loud – I knew all the words – but there wasn’t a single song I didn’t enjoy, and I’m still known to occasionally duet Paradise By The Dashboard Light on Karaoke, if I can find a willing partner.

But my favourite song, far and away, was Objects in the Rearview Mirror May Appear Closer Than They Are. A clumsy title for a song, but a beautiful metaphor for life. Back then, it was my favourite tune, but as an adult I have a new appreciation for the clever lyrics.

This week, I am reminded of them for an altogether sadder reason.

A young man I don’t know lost his life this week. The Boyfriend was called to the accident – a car crash – just after we’d gone to bed. I don’t really remember. I’ve been so tired lately, I sometimes have trouble distinguishing between what really happens, and what’s a dream at night time.

I didn’t make the connection when my Facebook feed started to fill with RIP messages. I didn’t make the connection when I saw the story on BBC News. But I knew, without having to know that the Fire Service were called, that the most likely reason the two young men in the car lost their lives was due to speed or alcohol. I suspected speed.

I had very little sympathy. You choose to drive considerably over the speed limit, you’re not only taking your own life into your hands, but the lives of other road users. It’s fairly inevitable that something dreadful will happen eventually. The Boyfriend has seen it enough times, and in my job, working with young people, I’ve known it close enough to know people affected personally.

I never met the young man in question, or the passenger in his car. But he was my sister Taylor’s best friend’s brother.

I’m not terribly empathic, or sympathetic. I’d be lying if I said I felt anything for the boys. But I feel so desperately sad for the families they left behind. Particularly the family I know.

I recently downloaded the piano music for Objects in the Rear View Mirror, and singing through it today, I was struck by how much the first verse and chorus described the situation – from a future perspective, perhaps, but it was close enough to prompt me to record my emotions here. A cathartic purging that will make me feel a little better. Until I remember that there’s nothing the family of the boy whose name I didn’t even know until monday will be able to do to feel better. Except wait for time to heal.

But it does break my heart to think that young man will always now be an object in the rear view mirror to Taylor’s friend.

Objects in the Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer Than They Are

The skies were pure and the fields were green
And the sun was brighter than it’s ever been
When I grew up with my best friend Kenny
We were close as any brothers than you ever knew

It was always summer and the future called
We were ready for adventures and we wanted them all
And there was so much left to dream
And so much time to make it real

But I can still recall the sting of all
The tears when he was gone
They said he crashed and burned
I know I’ll never learn
Why any boy should die so young

We were racing, we were soldiers of fortune
We got in trouble but we sure got around
There are times I think I see him peeling out of the dark
I think he’s right behind me now and he’s gaining ground

But it was long ago and it was far away,
Oh God it seems so very far
And if life is just a highway,
Then the soul is just a car
And objects in the rear view mirror
May appear closer than they are

May Reading List

Er… Did I say something about Adamatine Palace going down this month….?

On the plus side, I have read a lot of books. Just… not the ones on my list. I don’t know what it is about Adamantine Palace – it’s a list destroyer. I’m really enjoying it as well, I just haven’t finished it…

So, I read: Bone Key by Keith DeCandido (on the list), Velvet by Mary Hooper, The Calling by Kelley Armstrong, Awakening by Kelley Armstrong, Crossed by Allie Condie, Six Days, Three Months by Charlie Jane Anders and The Maze Runner by James Dashner (not on the list).

May Reading List

The Adamantine Palace – Stephen Deas (No really, it is going to get read this month)

Equal Rites – Terry Pratchett (another hangover from last month)

Caressed By Ice – Nalini Singh (because it’s the last one of her Psy-Changling series I own, and I feel like finishing the set)